German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C

GERMAN HISTORICAL INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

BULLETIN

ISSUE 29 FALL 2001

CONTENTS

PREFACE

OBITUARY: EDMUND SPEVACK (1963–2001)

FEATURES Gerd Bucerius Lecture 2001: Democracy Under Pressure: The European Experience Lord Ralf Dahrendorf ...... 5 From Harry S to George W.: German–American Relations and American Presidents Robert Gerald Livingston ...... 15 Comparative History: Buyer Beware Deborah Cohen ...... 23

GHI RESEARCH Scientists, Scholars, and the State: Germany and the United States in World War I Christoph Strupp ...... 35

CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS Grassroots Democracy? A Comparative History of Communities and State Building in New England and Germany, 1500–1850 Johannes Dillinger ...... 53 Archaeology of the Present: Photographs by Gerhard Faller-Walzer Cordula Grewe...... 58 Prussia—Yesterday and Tomorrow Robert Gerald Livingston ...... 63 Europe in Cross-National and Comparative Perspective Vera Lind ...... 65 Postwar German Generations and the Legitimacy of the Republic Vera Lind ...... 68 Philanthropy, Patronage, and Urban Politics: Transatlantic Transfers Between Europe and North America in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Thomas Adam...... 71 Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern Germany, 1870–1960 Richard F. Wetzell ...... 74 The Spirit of an Age: Nineteenth-Century Paintings from the Nationalgalerie, Berlin Cordula Grewe...... 80

SEMINARS Young Scholars Forum 2001: Gender, Power, Religion— Forces in Cultural History Vera Lind ...... 85 Seventh Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar in German History: Germany in the Age of Total War, 1914–1945 Andreas W. Daum and Richard F. Wetzell ...... 92 Summer Seminar in Paleography and Archival Studies, June 17–30, 2001 Daniel S. Mattern ...... 98

NEWS The Debate on the Reconstruction of the Berliner Stadtschloss ...... 103 The Life of Henry Villard (1835–1900) ...... 103 Library Report ...... 104 Recipients of the GHI’s Dissertation and Habilitation Scholarships, 2002 ...... 104 New Publications...... 105 Internship Program at the GHI...... 105 Staff Changes...... 106

EVENTS Fall 2001 Lecture Series ...... 109 Medieval History Seminar ...... 110 Annual Lecture 2001 ...... 110 Friends of the GHI/Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize...... 110 Young Scholars Forum 2002 ...... 111 Thyssen-Heideking Fellowship...... 111 Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar 2002 ...... 112 Summer Seminar in Germany, June 2–15, 2002 ...... 113 Upcoming in 2001 and 2002 ...... 114 PREFACE

The highlight of the Institute’s spring lecture program was the inauguration of the annual Gerd Bucerius Lecture on June 5th with a talk by Lord Ralf Dahrendorf on “Democracy Under Pressure: The European Experience.” The Annual Gerd Bucerius Lecture was made possible by a generous grant from the DIE ZEIT-Stiftung in Hamburg. Speakers in the series address topics of transatlantic relevance that are linked, in one way or another, to the life and concerns of Bucerius, the co-founder of Germany’s leading post-war intellectual weekly, DIE ZEIT. The series honors a man who helped rebuild German “civil society” after the collapse of the Nazi regime and who was, as Helmut Schmidt pointed out, ”obsessed with the idea of freedom“—a daring entrepreneur, leading publisher, and convinced liberal always on the lookout for threats to democratic processes. In the spirit of Bucerius, Lord Dahrendorf argued that democracy is under serious pressure in today’s Europe—and not only in Europe. He pointed to the weakening of the nation-state by a process of internationalization that, in his view, also implies a weakening of democratic institutions and political culture. Even the institutions of the European Union— as they are constituted today—fail “the democracy test.” Lord Dahrendorf’s provocative theses led to a vivid discussion with members of the Institute’s largest audience ever. The text of the lecture can be found on page five of this issue. A major feature of this issue is an article by Robert Gerald Livingston, senior visiting fellow at the GHI. In “From Harry S to George W.: German- American Relations and American Presidents”, Livingston discusses U.S. policy toward Europe and Germany from 1945 to 2001. Livingston argues that Germany has changed beyond recognition politically since Word War II and has become more distant from the United States. The fall Bulletin also draws attention to current debates in historiography with an article by Deborah Cohen, a professor of history at American University and co-convener of a GHI workshop on “Europe in Compara- tive and Cross-National Perspective” at the University of Cincinnati this past April. In her article “Comparative History: Buyer Beware” Cohen reflects on the gains and pleasures, but even more so on the obstacles, costs, and pitfalls, of cross-national and comparative research within the historical discipline. Above all, the Institute is proud to announce the publication of Die USA und Deutschland im Zeitalter des Kalten Krieges 1945–1990: Ein Handbuch

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 1 (Munich, 2001), edited by the former director of the Institute, Detlef Junker, and three former GHI fellows, Philipp Gassert, Wilfried Mausbach, and David B. Morris. The two-volume handbook serves as an excellent reference tool on the Cold War, offering some 150 articles in the fields of politics, security, economics, culture, and society. An English-language edition is scheduled for publication by Cambridge University Press in 2002.

Christof Mauch

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 2 EDMUND SPEVACK (1963–2001)

The field of German–American history has lost a promising young scholar, Dr. Edmund Spevack, a former research fellow at the GHI, who died on July 2, 2001, in Münster, Germany, after having been diagnosed with brain cancer in 1999. The son of a German mother and an American father, Edmund was a citizen of two worlds, the Old and the New. He was educated on both sides of the Atlantic and was fluent in English and German. After German pre- paratory school he majored in history and literature at Harvard University and was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1986. He began his graduate studies at the University of Münster but returned to his adopted country, this time to Johns Hopkins University, from which he received his M.A. in 1989 and his Ph.D. in 1992. As a visiting assistant professor he taught American studies at the University of Stuttgart (1992–3) and he lectured in history and literature at Harvard University (1993–6). Thereafter, he joined the staff of the GHI, turning down other offers, including a prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship. Dur- ing his first year in Washington he was a Volkswagen Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the GHI with a joint appointment at the American Institute of Contemporary German Studies. The following year he became a fully fledged GHI research fellow. During his tenure at the GHI he co- authored The German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.: Ten Year Report, 1987–1997 (with Detlef Junker and Thomas Goebel) and served as a GHI representative at cultural leadership meetings. If it is true that historical research reflects autobiographical elements, it may be particularly true for Edmund and his commitment to the field of German–American relations. His dissertation on Charles Follen’s Search for Nationality and Freedom: Germany and America, 1796–1840 (published by Harvard University Press in 1997), mirrors Edmund’s own search for a deeper understanding of German and American intellectual and political culture. During his four years at the Institute (1996–9) Edmund worked on his second book, a major study of American influences on the West German constitution, the Grundgesetz. He concluded that Americans had been much more deeply involved in the shaping of the Grundgesetz than had been acknowledged to date. The 700-page book Allied Control and German Free- dom: American Political and Ideological Influences on the Shaping of the West German Constitution, 1948–1949 will be published by LitVerlag Münster in the fall of 2001.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 3 Edmund was a learned yet very modest man, a scholar with wide-ranging interests in international relations, economics, and culture who possessed an excellent memory, even for trivia. If the rest of us could not recall the name of some obscure contemporary politician, Edmund was sure to have the answer and spared us many a visit to the reference library. Edmund was an extremely meticulous, some might say obsessive, scholar and researcher. But when he socialized with GHI friends and colleagues, he could cut loose. He was without a doubt a very gifted mimic and raconteur, never resorting to “bitterness or cynicism, but to a liberat- ing sense of humor,” as one of his friends put it. Over lunch he would show his talent for inventing characters and scenes, highlighting the absur- dity of everyday academic American life; and often he reduced his friends and colleagues to tears of laughter. Edmund maintained his strong interest in the world around him and in other people, almost to the day he died. His untimely death is hard to accept; his enriching scholarly life and his humanity sustain us. Edmund is sorely missed.

Christof Mauch

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 4 FEATURES

On June 5, 2001, Lord Ralf Dahrendorf inaugurated the annual Gerd Bucerius Lecture at the GHI. The lecture is made possible by a generous grant from the DIE ZEIT foundation, which was represented by the foundation’s program director, Markus Baumanns. He and Christof Mauch, the GHI’s acting director, provided the introduction: Baumanns outlined the goals and programs of the foundation, whereas Mauch turned the spotlight on the life and work of both Bucerius and Lord Dahrendorf. Lord Dahrendorf spoke on “Democracy Under Pressure: The European Expe- rience,” analyzing developments after 1989. The full text of his lecture is repro- duced below.

DEMOCRACY UNDER PRESSURE: THE EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE

Ralf Dahrendorf West Germany after 1945 was a fortunate country. Without much deliber- ate effort, it found the leadership to take it forward to democracy and prosperity. Some of the protagonists, politicians in particular, were not new to the scene. Men such as Konrad Adenauer, Kurt Schumacher, and Theodor Heuss had been members of the Weimar elite. Their emergence testified to the forever astonishing brevity of the murderous episode of Nazi rule. One tends to forget that Adolf Hitler’s hold on power lasted about as long as Margaret Thatcher’s in Britain and was significantly shorter than, say, François Mitterand’s two presidential terms in France or indeed Helmut Kohl’s eighteen years as German federal chancellor. Some postwar Ger- man leaders were of course new, among them the “father of the economic miracle,” Ludwig Erhard. And as Wolfgang Zapf has shown in his ground- breaking study of “changes of the German elite,” all operated in a political climate auspicious for sustainable liberty.1 This climate had something to do with a particularly striking group of homines novi, the founders of influential media, notably newspapers. Axel Springer had already been a small- scale publisher but began to build up his newspaper empire, ranging from tabloids to broadsheets. Rudolf Augstein of Der Spiegel was certainly new. They (and a score of others) owed their power—and their fortunes—to a

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 5 unique process; they were given “licenses” to publish by the Allied occupation authorities. Much of Germany’s print-media scene—including a strong regional press—is based on the remarkable success of such licensees or “license-bearers” (Lizenzträger ). Postwar German democracy owes them a lot. One of the most notable among the “license-bearers” was the man to whose memory this series of lectures is dedicated, Gerd Bucerius. He was twenty-seven years old when the Nazis came to power in 1933. The young lawyer had always shown a slightly contrary streak and shocked his par- ents, especially his reactionary father, by marrying a Jewish woman in 1932. After Hitler’s seizure of power this fact put paid to his judicial career, although not to his work as a lawyer in his father’s firm. Bucerius was re- membered after the war for his courageous defense of Jewish clients who sought to leave the country when that was still possible. In 1938 he took his wife to England, where she survived the war, and he steadfastly refused to give in to demands by the Nazi authorities to divorce her—although after the war the marriage failed. When the British occupied Hamburg, where Bucerius lived, he was soon picked out as a lawyer with a clean political record. He was put in charge of various tasks until, within days, in Febru- ary 1946, he was appointed a senator, that is, a member of Hamburg’s city government, and given the license for the weekly DIE ZEIT, one of democratic Germany’s great success stories. When Bucerius died in 1995 he be- queathed a handsome fortune to the foundation that was established in his (and his wife’s) name and that of his weekly. While writing the biography of Gerd Bucerius, I was struck above all by his political stance.2 In 1949 Bucerius was elected to the first federal parliament (Bundestag) for the governing Christian Democrats; re-elected three times, he remained a member of the parliament until he resigned his seat in 1962. He was never a minister, although he supported Adenauer for many years and always encouraged Erhard, in both cases with his peculiar mixture of loyalty and critical candor. His political stance can best be described as that of a center–right liberal. Lucky the democracy that has staunch liberals to the right of center! This was, at any rate, one of my conclusions, although I would not describe my own position in these terms. Bucerius combined a strong sense of Germany’s national interest with insistence on the virtues of the market economy, even without the epithet “social,” and the ever-alert defense of civil and human rights. He surprised some when he paid the legal and medical bills for Rudi Dutschke, that hero and victim of 1968 in Germany, on the grounds that, for the rule of law to be real, the most vulnerable also need the most help. Whereas he often disagreed with the line taken by the somewhat left–liberal DIE ZEIT and at times gave vent to his views in outspoken articles, he never interfered with the independence of his editors. When he resigned as a member of parlia-

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 6 ment, one major reason was that he refused to repudiate the author of an article in another magazine of his, Der Stern, which his party had found highly offensive. It has been said that one of the reasons for the failure of the Weimar Republic lay in the fact that it was a democracy without democrats. If postwar Germany has been—and by all appearances will be—spared the same fate, this is owed in no small measure to Gerd Bucerius and others like him who were good democrats, untiring in their defense of pluralism and the rule of law. These descriptions of a man of stature and influence may explain why I felt honored to be asked to give this first Bucerius Lecture and also why I chose the subject of democracy at risk. I remember my parental hometown of Hamburg in 1946, when Bucerius became a senator and newspaper publisher, and I grew up in the new climate he helped create. My own family, of course, had a different background—Social Democratic politically and involved in active resistance against the Nazi regime. Our commitment to liberty, democracy, and the rule of law was as strong as anyone’s. My father and Bucerius were both members of the forerunner of the Bundestag, the Economic Council. Accompanying my father to this indirectly elected preparliament of which he was vice president, I had my first parliamentary experience and was enthralled. Later, the vicarious experience was followed by actuality. At various points in the kaleidoscope of my life I was an elected member of the state diet of Baden-Württemberg and later of the Bundestag; I held a seat in the European Parliament as a commissioner, and am now a member of the Parliament of Westminster, albeit not at the elected but at the appointed end, the House of Lords. Even today, after eight years in the Upper House, I feel a thrill every time I enter the chamber to take part in the scrutiny of legislation or in one of the great debates for which the House is renowned. I mention this to make it clear that in some ways this lecture gives me little pleasure. Its main thesis is that today, and at least in Europe, democracy is under serious pressure. Indeed, I recently spent six days with a well- known Italian journalist, Antonio Polito, discussing democracy at the beginning of the new century, and the result will be published as a little book under the title Dopo democrazia, “after democracy.” The pressure most notably on representative or parliamentary democracy is such that we will have to rethink the constitution of liberty. Moreover, this pressure comes from two sides at the same time. Within countries, several developments con- spire to set in motion a kind of creeping authoritarianism. Beyond the boundaries of countries this is reinforced by what is crudely called globalization, that is, the emigration of important decisions to spaces for which democratic processes and institutions do not exist.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 7 I refer, as I said, to Europe. Americans will no doubt recognize some of the problems, but for a number of reasons the American position is different. Like Larry Siedentop in his influential book Democracy in Europe, I am concerned both with the countries of Europe and with the European Union.3 Also, I refer to Europe after 1989. Many of us still remember with joy those months twelve years ago when country after country east of the crumbling Iron Curtain emerged from nomenclature rule into the first halting steps toward democracy. As a Popperian I never subscribed to the view that threats to liberty were forever dispelled and Hegel’s (or Kojeve’s) final synthesis had arrived. At the same time I did not anticipate that within little more than a decade the risks to democracy would become quite so powerful. In recent weeks two of the major countries of Europe, Italy and the United Kingdom, have undergone—and survived—national election campaigns. In both cases these campaigns were in fact expressions of what might be called antipolitics. This was especially evident in Italy: The winning candidate used all his experience with—as well as ownership of—the media to project the image of a leader who is different, a star, a celebrity, an entrepreneur who knows what his customers want. It is worth remembering what happened on the other side of the Italian political spectrum. Giuliano Amato, a prime minister who, by common consent, had done his job exceptionally well, was considered insufficiently telegenic to lead the center–left into the election. Someone more attractive to viewers had to be and was found in the person of Francesco Rutelli. Rutelli did turn out to be a very serious candidate, but the reasons for his choice tell the relevant story. Some would argue that something similar happened in Britain because the “real prime minister” is the chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, whereas Tony Blair, who likes to surround himself with stars from anywhere but politics, is needed to get the votes. However that may be, Blair is a leader who likes to bypass political institutions like party and parliament and turn directly to the people or, better still, to “focus groups” selected as representatives of the people. Celebrity politics often is also snapshot politics. Somehow, continuity has left the democratic process. What counts is the view of the moment— and this is highly volatile. A week after the election the voters are just as likely to turn against their choices. The chosen leader (if that is the term) for his part is quite happy to abandon his projects if what he regards as the people want something different. Throwaway politics is another notion that comes to mind: Like Coca-Cola cans, indeed like cameras, radios, and soon mobile phones, policies are chosen, used, and discarded. What has disappeared from our democracies is extended debate and the patient pursuit of objectives through periods of popular support as well as those of popular doubt.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 8 Institutionally speaking, what has disappeared is the pivotal role of parliament. Blair’s first act after his election in 1997 was to reduce “Prime Minister’s Questions” in the House of Commons from two days to one—a symbolic yet significant act. Perhaps the British Parliament has always been more malleable than those of countries with a clear separation of powers, but the tendency to strengthen the executive and weaken parliament is widespread. I am a member of a committee of the Upper House that scrutinizes bills in order to prevent government from using legislation to delegate powers to the executive. In recent years there has been a massive increase in such attempts. Elsewhere in Europe, especially in the European Union, secondary legislation remains largely outside parliamentary control. Govern- ment by what we call “Henry VIII clauses,” that is, provisions in primary legislation that enable the executive to alter the very purpose of an act or even revoke it, is widespread. It is no accident that the instrument of referendum is more widely used. There is also another side to the picture. Turnout in elections is still high in Europe, at least when compared to the United States. Nevertheless, ob- servers find widespread apathy, if not cynicism, with regard to politics. People do not care, and although they do not trust anyone in power, they cannot be bothered to do anything about it. This is how the authoritarian syndrome emerges. Contrary to totalitarianism, authoritarianism is founded not on the permanent mobilization of all subjects but on their disinterest. People—citizens indeed!—can do what they want as long as they do not interfere with the smooth exercise of power. This in turn is increasingly concentrated in the executive. Such creeping authoritarianism may not quite work. In France there is a well-established tradition of 100,000 teachers or farmers or nurses descending on Paris and forcing the government to mend its ways. Last year a number of European countries reacted to blockades by truck drivers demanding lower taxes on fuel. None of this is democracy as James Madison or John Stuart Mill envisaged it. “Strengthening Parliament,” to quote the title of a recent report by British Conservatives, has become an uphill task. This is all the more so in view of the other half of the somewhat somber picture that I paint here—globalization. Democracy, as I understand it, means three things: change is possible without violence; there are checks and balances to the exercise of power; and the people have a decisive say in the process. Representative or parliamentary democracy links these elements through the election of representatives who, in and through parliament, can change policies and, if necessary, government, as well as scrutinize and control the exercise of power. Such institutions were historically developed in the nation-state and indeed in many cases alongside the formation of nation-states. Both Madison and Mill (and many others) offered

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 9 important reflections on the size and nature—or rather, the culture—of the communities in which democratic institutions work; Madison spoke of a space in which there are “chords of allegiance,” Mill of “nationality.” However we define or describe the traditional political space for democratic institutions, from a European perspective at least it is rapidly losing relevance for important decisions. Whether and when interest rates are changed is decided by an unaccountable European Central Bank. Aerial attacks on Baghdad are planned and initiated by NATO. Whether Russia receives further help from the international community, despite the halting repayment of its debt, is a matter for the International Monetary Fund. Al- though in these cases one can at least point to institutions, other decisions of great significance issue from less defined agencies, as when a Japanese company decides to invest in Wales rather than in Normandy or an Ameri- can speculator grabs an auspicious moment to drive the pound sterling out of the European Monetary System and billions of dollars into his own accounts. Sometimes it is just the wholly anonymous “markets” that seem to call the tune. So what happens to democracy? Change without violence? This is hard to bring about if one does not even know who does what, when, and how. It could be argued, however, that all international agencies should apply the equivalent of the 22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution and impose strict limits on their leaders’ terms of office. Checks and balances? This arguably is the area on which we should concentrate in the years to come. There are ways of controlling the exercise of power in a globalized environment. In part they are judicial in the widest sense of the term, including regulators and arbitrators. In part, and at an earlier stage in the process, auditing international decision makers is a prerequisite of control. Information technology helps bring to light relevant facts and figures. In some cases national parliaments could gear themselves up to scrutinize international decisions without jeopardizing the advantages of global spaces in the process. This is a list of items on the agenda for a democratic response to the emigration of decisions from traditional political spaces, but it fails to address the remaining and fundamental issue: How can the people have a say in processes for which there are no appropriate institutions? The large and at times violent demonstrations in Seattle, Washington, D.C., Prague, and Lon- don are clearly not the answer, although they do underline the question. They show that people want a say—indeed that they resent the removal of important decisions from their grasp. I say this not so much because of the slogan of demonstrators convened over the Internet but because of the quiet support they receive from many who would not dream of setting cars on fire or smashing shop windows, although they do enjoy reading the anticapital-

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 10 ist diatribes by Viviane Forrester and others. As a result, the “politics of cultural despair” is once again with us and with it the political dangers that prompted Fritz Stern to write his book with this title about antimodernism in Imperial Germany.4 It is hard to escape the conclusion that democracy and the nation-state are tied to each other. The weakening of the nation-state by a process of internationalization is, by the same token, a weakening of democracy. So far, we have not been able to apply the principles of democracy to political spaces beyond the nation-state. This is a strong statement in a piece on democracy in Europe. What about the European Union? Is it not an example, even a successful example, of democracy beyond the nation-state? It is true that recent years have seen a shift in the arguments advanced for Europe to form an ever- closer union. Few now argue that the motive should be to prevent war or even to keep Germany under control. Some think that the main purpose of European integration today is to enable Europe to hold its own vis-à-vis the United States. Anti-American sentiment creeps into such views at times, but more often the belief is espoused that a “European model,” notably of economic and social policy, is worth defending. Many of a more liberal persuasion, however, see the institutionalization of Europe as a step in the right direction in terms of coping with globalization by democratic means. If we cannot have global democracy just yet, we can at least begin the jour- ney toward that goal by creating a large region, Europe, along democratic principles. I appreciate the intention, but—alas!—it is far from the reality of the European Union. The EU has laid down quite serious tests of democratic virtue for so-called accession countries. If, however, it applied these tests to itself, the result would be dismal. It is not a joke to say that if the EU itself applied for accession to the EU, it would not be admitted because it is insufficiently democratic. The EU was, of course, set up as a common market, later extended by its greatest leader so far, Jacques Delors, into a single market. For this purpose the very French—indeed Cartesian—construction of its institutions may well have been appropriate. The right to propose rests with a commission constructed to embody the common European interest; the right to dispose, to decide, remains with a council of ministers that assembles the various national interests. A court of justice makes sure that both institutions remain on the straight and narrow. And democracy? I am convinced that the European Assembly (as it was then called) was an afterthought when the Treaty of Rome was drafted in 1956. It had no real function and since that time has only gradually ac- quired further rights, although even now these do not include the right to determine its own seat or to raise funds for its own budget, or indeed to

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 11 pass legislation as the sovereign representative of the people. It is directly elected, but sovereignty remains elsewhere—in nation-states, in the execu- tives, in elusive spaces beyond the grasp of the people. In any case, what people are we talking about? There now is a lively debate of such issues among both speech-making politicians and among puzzled academics. My own conclusion remains that there is no such thing as a European demos on which to build a European democracy. Public opinion, even published opinion, is fragmented into national segments at best (for many are regional within the countries). European elections leave most voters uninterested; turnout in many countries is under 50 percent. Those who vote in fact vote on national issues, notably on the popularity of their own government at the time. The resulting parliamentary assembly is similarly fragmented. More than fifty of its members never turn up; those who do frequently are people who failed to get into national parliaments or have retired from more important national positions. As a result, the European Union’s decision-making process is an insult to democracy. This is all the more important at a time when the EU is trying to venture out of the constraints of the single market into all sorts of new areas, notably into foreign and security policy, and into the justice and domestic affairs fields. (At the same time it is useful to remember that, in budgetary terms, Europe remains a rather minor power, disposing as it does of less than 1.2 percent of the gross domestic product of countries that themselves give their parliaments and governments control over 40 percent or more of their GDP.) It would be possible, and perhaps rewarding, to look in more detail at the decision-making processes of the European Union, but I doubt whether such a closer look would dispel the conclusion that Europe’s institutions fail the democracy test. Far from being a successful step in the direction of applying democracy beyond the nation-state, Eu- rope proves that this is all but impossible to achieve. Now that I have spread almost unmitigated gloom about my subject, it is time to look for more encouraging answers. They will, however, not be simple. Let me offer you three sets of ideas, of hints, about the future of democracy from a European perspective. First, it is important to remember that the nation-state is still the single most important political space at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It may have lost some of its strength, but it remains the relevant inclusive community for most people. For those who have just escaped from imperial domi- nation, such as the formerly Soviet-ruled countries of Central and Eastern Eu- rope, the nation-state embodies not just sovereignty but freedom. Everywhere in Europe key social policies are decided by national parliaments. The variet- ies of economic and political culture bear witness to the strength of nation- states.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 12 This means that parliamentary democracy is not a spent force. It has to be, and it can be, defended against all threats. Within countries the main dangers today are, on the one hand, the creeping authoritarianism of which I have written, and on the other, the new regionalism. Although regionalism often appears in the guise of self-determination, it is a very dubious contribution to democracy. Beyond countries, another dubious trend must be resisted, that is, the use of “globalization” as a pretext for decisions that in fact have nothing to do with such trends. Rural post offices do not have to be closed for reasons of globalization. There thus are plenty of reasons for the vigorous defense of parliaments and of representative democracy generally. Second, as we move beyond the nation-state we must beware the pre- tense of democracy when in fact the voice of the people does not reach decision makers in any regular and constitutional way. It is quite likely that this central feature of true democracy will for some time remain lacking in international political spaces all the way from the European Union through NATO to the United Nations and its agencies, including the IMF, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank. This means that for the time being, we must concentrate on setting up effective and transparent checks and balances. There are many ways of going about this task. I have already alluded to the 22nd Amendment and to judicial and auditing institutions. Publicity itself is an instrument of controlling those in power. This still leaves the third and most difficult task unresolved, which is giving people a voice in matters that are decided beyond the nation-state. I am afraid my conclusion is that this will have to remain unresolved. For some time to come we shall live with a confused and rather uncomfortable mix of highly imperfect attempts to democratize global decision making. I have been rather unkind to the European Parliament but, of course, it documents at least good intentions, as do the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the North Atlantic Assembly, and other similar institutions. There is also the array of nongovernmental organizations. At times they aspire to be more governmental than is good for them; at other times they are more antigovernmental than is good for the rest of us. But in their chaotic way they express the views of many people. The same is true in an even more diffuse fashion for the “Internet debates” that are taking place everywhere. And soon we are back to Seattle and all that, inchoate expressions of frustration by people who have a right to be heard but cannot find a way to give voice to their views. For the moment, I see no way of giving shape to this cacophony. Except for one final point, perhaps: I have referred to the description of Germany’s Weimar Republic as a democracy without democrats. This was one of the reasons why Weimar democracy could not last. However, the op-

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 13 posite condition offers more hope. If we cannot have world or even Euro- pean democracy, at least we can have democrats. By this I mean people who are conscious of their rights as citizens and take seriously the responsibility to actively defend them. Citizens do not just let things happen; they speak up, and even if they are not always heard, it matters. They use all nonviolent means to check the untrammeled exercise of power. They support visible initiatives, like, say, the counter-World Forum at Punto Alegre earlier this year. They form an invisible network of defenders of freedom, which, in principle, spreads all over the world. Democrats without democracy offer a more hopeful prospect than the reverse. Perhaps this was the secret of postwar Germany: There were democrats, like Gerd Bucerius, who were prepared to practice what they believed and thus created a working democracy. For all we know, something of this kind may one day be achieved beyond the nation-state.

Notes

1Wolfgang Zapf, Wandlungen der deutschen Elite: Ein Zirkulationsmodell deutscher Führungsgruppen 1919–1961 (Munich, 1965). 2Ralf Dahrendorf, Liberal und unabhängig: Gerd Bucerius und seine Zeit (Munich, 2000). 3Larry Siedentop, Democracy in Europe (London, 2000). 4Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley, Calif., 1961).

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 14 FROM HARRY S TO GEORGE W.: GERMAN– AMERICAN RELATIONS AND AMERICAN PRESIDENTS

Robert Gerald Livingston Germany lay at the center of United States foreign-policy making during most of the forty-five years following World War II, on three occasions at the very center, where presidents decide, and all three related to Berlin: in 1948 and 1949, during the American–British airlift; in 1961 and 1962, when the Berlin Wall was built and Nikita Khrushchev deployed his missiles in Cuba; and in 1989 and 1990, when the Wall fell and Germany reunited. Those decades are contemplated nowadays in America with nostalgic sentiment, as a good time of close alliance when, as the German–American historian Fritz Stern has written, America’s leaders were willing to give Germany “a second chance” after Nazism, a chance that the Germans in the west seized with alacrity, hope, and energy, and with a gratitude and loyalty that sometimes verged on subservience. The Germany of 2001 has changed beyond all recognition from the country of 1945. For one thing, the United States today deals with a united Ger- many, no longer the stunted West Germany that, in the words of one of its chancellors, was at best “an economic giant but a political dwarf.” For a variety of reasons today’s Germany is becoming politically more distant from the United States, its primary foreign policy focus the European Union (EU). That of the United States has been shifting toward the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea, Southwest Asia, and the Pacific, where old dangers and new enemies and rivals lurk.

Defeat and Rehabilitation: 1945–1953 Never, even today, has the disparity in power between the United States and Germany been greater than after General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s infantry crossed the Rhine River in the spring of 1945: America gloriously triumphant and its homeland untouched by war; Germany utterly defeated, its government defunct, its cities and industries destroyed, its people, who had backed Hitler to the very end, despised throughout Europe and at their conquerors’ mercy. With that American drive to do right while being righteous the United States prevailed on its wartime allies, the British, French, and Soviets, to arrange legal, not vengeful, punishment for the Nazi leadership. American jurists took the lead at the ensuing war-crimes trials in Nuremberg, a city in

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 15 the American Zone of Occupation and one that had been a favorite of the Nazis. To a greater degree than their allies, too, the Americans considered it a mission to denazify, re-educate, and remake Germany under occupa- tional tutelage into a decent democracy. Already by 1946 the punitive phase was coming to an end; and by 1948 American officials had begun pushing Germans in the western part of the country to revive the economy and set up a separate state. Anxieties aris- ing out of rapid and sometimes brutal communist assertions of political control in the eastern zone, the Soviet Zone of Occupation, and in the countries under their influence to the east of Germany lay behind this policy change. Henceforth, to say that Germany was central to American policy meant only West Germany (and the western sectors of Berlin occupied by the Americans, British, and French), which became the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland), adopting a democratic constitution (the Grundgesetz) in 1949. Unity between the two parts of the country was incorporated into that document as a political goal but one that during the 1950s became relegated to an indiscernible future. The Federal Repub- lic, the bigger and more dynamic part, asserted itself as the only legitimate German state (and also the only legal successor to Hitler’s Reich)—a view completely supported by the United States, which had nothing officially to do with the other German state, the communist German Democratic Re- public (GDR), until 1974. Among the Soviet moves that caused anxiety in the West was a block- ade imposed in 1948 on the land and waterway routes to Berlin, which lay deep within the Soviet zone. President Harry S Truman directed the organization of an airlift to supply the city, which lasted nearly a year. The drama of this first Berlin crisis first drew Americans’ attention to the city and the spunky Berliners. His role in dealing with the crisis helped Truman win the election in 1948. The city took on—and retains to this day—a dispropor- tionate aura in the United States’s relationship with Germany. United States relations with modern Germany have been shaped until recently by wars: World Wars I and II and the Cold War, of course, but also the Korean War of 1950–3. Following communist power grabs and pres- sures in Europe of the late 1940s, the North Korean invasion of the south raised concern in Washington to new heights. The fear was very real at the time that the North Korean thrust was but a prelude, that East Germany might be a similar staging area from which an attack would be launched against the weak American, British, and French armies occupying West Germany. The strategists’ conclusion? German soldiers and industrial power were needed immediately if an effective defense were to be mounted against such danger.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 16 This is why the United States became so ready so soon to forgive and forget what Nazi Germany had done. It became the principal champion of West Germany’s rehabilitation, encouraging it to rearm and ally itself with the United States. This policy accorded with the Wilsonian missionary strain in American foreign policy. Moreover, it appealed to Americans’ desire to feel good about our undertakings abroad: West Germany redeemed from pride and sin by American Marshall Plan generosity and transformed into democracy thanks to American re-education and influence in framing its new constitution. During this period public discussion of Germany in the United States, even among American Jews, largely passed over in silence the Nazis’ crimes, surprising as this may seem from the perspective of the 1980s and 1990s, when the Holocaust has been endlessly recalled, examined, and debated.

Joining the West: 1953–1969 The Federal Republic (and West Berlin) was central to U.S. policy making in the 1950s and early 1960s for one simple reason: It was, until Vietnam, the chief battleground of America’s worldwide struggle against communism. Those of us who served there at the time felt ourselves to be on the Cold War’s front line. As many as 250,000 American troops were stationed in Germany at times, far more than anywhere else abroad. The U.S. Em- bassy in Bonn, West Germany’s seat of government, was the largest in the world until Vietnam. Beginning with John F. Kennedy, every American president has paid a well-publicized visit or two to Germany, usually to Berlin. West Germany was governed until 1969 by conservatives ready to over- ride public opposition and rebuild German military might, despite the mis- givings of European neighbors. The Federal Republic became America’s main foreign bastion against the Soviets. It cemented its alignment with a United States whose own anticommunist traditions reached back to the 1920s and attained new intensity as McCarthyism gripped the country. For Germans, although this was unspoken, the fight against Soviet communism represented a continuation of Hitler’s campaign against Bolshevism. With American patronage West Germany became a member of the U.S.- led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1955; and with Ameri- can encouragement it joined with France, Italy, and the Benelux countries in the European Community (later transformed into the EU) two years later. In little more than ten years after World War II, Germany found rehabilitation and regained respectability through its integration into these multilateral Western organizations. How could the former enemy so easily and rapidly manage to become an ally? First, vital interests—in the case of West Germany existential ones and per-

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 17 haps in the case of the United States also—coincided seamlessly. In the atmosphere of the Cold War no American president could contemplate “losing” Ger- many to communism. Even those who, like Eisenhower or Kennedy, were willing to make some concessions to the Soviets in order to defuse tensions around Berlin understood the centrality of Germany to the U.S. position in the world. Second, so long as “hard” issues such as military security dominated the American foreign-policy agenda, the strategic value of a German bastion could scarcely be denied. Economic, trade, and other “soft” issues were automatically and quite naturally subordinated to defense in those days. Third, the American political leadership of the time was oriented toward Europe. The three postwar presidents had all had personal European experience: Truman as an artillery captain in World War I, Eisenhower as supreme commander of Western allied forces in World War II, and Kennedy as the college-age son of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ambassador to London. Policy making was in the hands of “wise men,” charter members of the East Coast establishment such as Dean Acheson, John Foster Dulles, George Kennan, and John McCloy, many with links to Germany going back to the 1920s or 1930s. And fourth, America at that time was still a country of immigrants from Europe who could understand the case for engagement there. As late as 1960 Germans ranked number one among groups of foreign-born Americans. Americans’ attention was drawn again to Germany after 1958, when Khrushchev posed an ultimatum that seemed designed to push the West out of Berlin. The new Berlin crisis continued for nearly five years, taking on a very personal aspect for Kennedy after his meeting with Khrushchev in the early summer of 1961. The situation climaxed with the building of the Wall in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis the next year. (The tapes of Kennedy’s Excom meetings during October 1962 show how directly related Cuba was to Berlin, with the participants believing that Khruschev’s objective with the Cuba deployment was to force the United States out of Berlin.) However, Kennedy’s acceptance of the Wall made it absolutely, if for some Germans painfully, clear—as had American passivity at the time of an uprising in East Germany in 1953—that U.S. involvement and protection extended to West Germany (and West Berlin) only, that it would run no risks for German interests in the east, much less for reunification.

Dealing with the East: 1969–1990 Kennedy came into office intent on improving relations with the Soviet Union, an objective that caused uneasiness on the part of the conservative, anticommunist Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. As a result, relations between Washington and Bonn hit a postwar low point during the early 1960s. Another prominent German for whom Kennedy’s policy, particu-

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 18 larly his unwillingness to challenge the dividing line through Berlin, was painful was the city’s young Social Democratic mayor, Willy Brandt. He concluded that if steps were to be taken to overcome the division, they would have to be small ones and be taken by Germans on their own. When Brandt became federal chancellor in 1969 he launched his Ostpolitik (Eastern policy). Its immediate aim was to build relations with the Soviet Union first and then with Poland; the longer-term aim was to connect in as many ways as possible with East Germany, hopefully to produce an intertwining of institutions and an increase in travel and communication between the two Germanies that would eventually create conditions conducive to breaking down the division of the country. By 1974 Ostpolitik was looking very good. When the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) regained power under Helmut Kohl eight years later, it continued the policy and even extended it, inviting the head of the GDR to Bonn in 1987 for what was a state visit in everything but name. President Richard M. Nixon and his German-born national security adviser Henry Kissinger were initially distrustful of a policy initiated not by America’s old friends in the CDU but by the Social Democrats with whom official Washington had had less to do over the years. Did Brandt’s attempt to edge the Federal Republic closer to the GDR presage a revival of Ger- man unitary nationalism? Would Ostpolitik conducted autonomously by Brandt undermine Nixon’s own policy of détente with the Soviet Union? Those were the sort of questions asked in Nixon’s White House. As Ostpolitik started to look successful, Nixon and Kissinger lent it grudging support and worked to coordinate it with their own policies toward the Kremlin. Kohl reaped the ultimate benefit from Ostpolitik when in 1990 a much- changed Soviet Union, Poland, and other communist states of Eastern Eu- rope agreed to German reunification and when the German–German intertwining promoted by the policy helped bring about the peaceful turn of East Germany toward the Federal Republic. During the entire Cold War the Federal Republic was existentially de- pendent on the United States. Its very capital, Berlin, was held in trustee- ship for Germany by the Americans, British, and French, giving the three much potential leverage in German politics. Forbidden nuclear weapons and with its army completely integrated into NATO’s operational structures, West Germany could not contemplate much less carry out any independent military action. Its NATO and EU memberships constrained it politically. German governments did not see these factors necessarily as handicaps. Rather, their foreign ambitions strictly limited for a long time to re- establishing Germany’s respect and presence in the West and later the East, they regarded America’s leading role in NATO and its presence in

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 19 Berlin as commitments binding the United States firmly to the Federal Republic and limiting its ability, about which Bonn was sometimes uneasy, to deal with the Soviet Union about German matters over the West Germans’ head. At the core of American commitments was the guarantee to protect West Germany, if need be with nuclear weapons. For Bonn the disadvantages and handicaps, relegation of reunification to never-never land and fi- delity to the United States, were a small price to pay for that protection.

Reunifying and Looking to Europe: 1990–2001 During the 1970s and particularly with the end of the Vietnam War, which had diverted Washington’s attention from Europe, German–American relations stabilized. Both countries were now intent on developing a network of arms-control and other treaties with the Soviet Union and its satellites. The differing personalities of President Jimmy Carter and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt led to an abrasiveness between them, although their policies toward the East were generally in alignment. In the 1980s the arrival of the conservative administrations of Helmut Kohl and Ronald Reagan brought a new closeness, although the peace movement in Germany, successor to the anti-Vietnam War protestors of earlier years, reflected widespread anxiety about Reagan’s large military buildup and his sometimes bellicose rhetoric. The big payoff for the long-time official German support for American strategies came in 1990, when President George Bush and the United States lent almost unconditional support to the cause of German unification. Brit- ish Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, French President François Mitterand, and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev would dearly have blocked it, had they been able. The United States by 1990 had every reason to be satisfied with the results of its German policy since the establishment of the Federal Republic forty-one years earlier. Far away, across the Atlantic, three times bigger than even the united Germany and disposing of military power unmatched (following the Soviet Union’s collapse) by any ten nations combined, the United States could accept Germany’s reunification with equanimity. Not so the other countries of the new Europe, where the united Germany, at a population of eighty-two million, was all at once nearly half again as big as France or Britain. Fears abounded there and elsewhere in Europe of a “Fourth Reich,” a Germany ready to assert dominance once again and to act alone if necessary to gain it. For more than a decade now, these fears have proven groundless. The so-called Berlin Republic has turned out to be the Bonn Republic simply writ a bit larger. Its values of democracy, self-restraint, and political mod-

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 20 esty are those of pre-1990 West Germany. Nothing like a Fourth Reich has emerged. Rather than insisting on greater national independence, Germany has been hiving off ever bigger chunks of its sovereignty to the European Union. Both Kohl and his successor, Gerhard Schröder, have made it clear that the future they see for Germany is a European one. Under both Kohl, who remained chancellor for sixteen years, and Schröder, who was elected in 1998, Germany has urged the transfer of still more member states’ competences to the EU and more power for the Union at the states’ ex- pense. Germany prefers to bring its increased weight to bear through the EU, not unilaterally. German unification, which had commanded Washington’s attention, had hardly been consummated in 1990 when George Bush, the father of the current president, shifted all attention away from Europe to the Persian Gulf in early 1991. That timing dramatically illustrated a displacement of foreign policy attention and engagement toward other regions of the world. Dangers there may be in Europe—as the Balkans since 1990 amply demonstrate—but for America (if not for Germany and Europe) they are minor ones. Gone is the Soviet threat, which kept America so intimately linked with the Federal Republic for all those years after 1945.

Where from Here? Perspectives have of course long differed—the United States’ is global, Germany’s is European—but now they are diverging more. Interests coincided during the Cold War, but now they coincide less. Common values, incessantly praised by politicians in both countries as the bedrock of the alliance, remain, but those that are not shared are getting more attention. For President Bill Clinton and his successor, George W. Bush, Germany is becoming much like any other advanced industrial country overseas. Common interests remain, of course, but they no longer are vital ones from a security point of view. Economic, trade, environmental, and other dis- putes suppressed during the Cold War now bedevil the relationship more frequently. Germany finds its interests best protected in such cases by maintaining solidarity with the other members of the EU, which has been ac- quiring real authority and greater self-confidence since the Maastricht Treaty was signed ten years ago. During Clinton’s two administrations America’s willingness to join with its NATO allies in peacekeeping and peace-enforcing operations in the Balkans and to pursue arms control diplomacy, to which Berlin always at- taches great store, kept Germany and America in close alignment. Bush’s new team seems inclined to interpret U.S. interests narrowly and to make clear a readiness to pursue them forcefully and also unilaterally if need be.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 21 It has indicated a lack of interest in a number of basic arms-control treaties to which the United States has been adhering for years. This has caused uneasiness in Berlin, for Germany during the forty-one years of the Bonn Re- public became accustomed to multilateralism and cautious incrementalism within NATO and the EU in pursuing its objectives. Within days after his arrival, the new German ambassador to Washington put the United States on notice that Europe would expect it to accept such principles as integration, multilateral arrangements, and treaties that “make our lives secure.” There may well be more frictions between the Bush administration and the Schröder government because less ideological affinity exists for the center–left coalition in Berlin with a markedly conservative Republican one in Washington than did with Clinton’s Democrats. Still, Germany, more than any other EU member, has a fundamental interest in the United States remaining a European power. Were it not engaged in Europe, then German power would be all too conspicuous and certain to induce coalitions against it. America in Europe once protected a weak West Germany. Now it pro- tects a strong united Germany as well.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 22 COMPARATIVE HISTORY: BUYER BEWARE

Deborah Cohen Comparative history has few detractors. Formally, at least, it may have even fewer practitioners. In seminars and lectures historians compare constantly, yet nearly seventy years after Marc Bloch proclaimed the “perfection and general use [of the comparative method,] one of the most pressing needs of present-day historical science,” the vast majority of historical studies still reside comfortably within the parameters of individual nation-states.1 De- spite paeans to the method and conference sessions devoted to its propaga- tion, comparative history has remained a marginal affair in the United States. Unlike gender history or the new cultural history, it is neither fashionable nor, until recently, a matter for controversy. Comparative histories owe much to national shame. In European history the Sonderweg provided the most powerful stimulus to comparative research; more than two-thirds of all comparative studies published between 1970 and 1989 focused on Germany.2 In the same years American historians took their own “peculiar institution” as a starting point. Race and slavery furnished the subject matter for most comparative studies until displaced by the welfare state in projects conceived and executed during the Reagan–Bush era. These concerns —together with the social-scientific methods of the 1970s, emblemized by the title of Charles Tilly’s surpris- ingly slim treatise, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons—account for the lion’s share of comparative work.3 Unlike quantitative history, that other darling of the 1970s, comparative history endures today. However, it is a sparsely populated congregation in a land of agnostics. The handful of comparativists who come readily to mind are the exceptions who prove the rule. Despite the paucity of studies there are innumerable methodological treatises on the subject of comparison, most notably from the field of historical sociology.4 We have a multiplicity of typologies of comparison. Calls for comparison still issue from all quarters—even as the responses echo back faintly. This siren song of comparison plays in an evangelical key. We comparativists dourly ex- hort our colleagues to assume ever-larger burdens with the promise of self- improvement in the distant offing. Like the early nineteenth-century Brit- ish evangelicals, we offer salvation, after enormous labors and unremitting self-scrutiny, to those who will only “row their boat ashore.” But what is largely missing in these heaps of methodological treatises is any sense of how to tackle this work. Only very infrequently do comparativists openly discuss the disadvantages and the pitfalls of what we do.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 23 There are few realistic appraisals of the problems and costs for historians. There is no primer as to how to proceed. Basic questions remain not simply unanswered, but even unasked. For instance, what sorts of studies are most likely to succeed? What kinds of work should be avoided? Is comparative history compatible with cultural history? In his 1980 article in the American Historical Review Raymond Grew sounded a dismal note. Of the five hundred manuscripts submitted to the journal Comparative Studies in Society and History, founded in 1958 to further comparative research, the ones most likely to be rejected were actually the comparative pieces.5 With friends such as these, who needs enemies? Perhaps it is significant that in the past decade the most stinging criticisms of comparative work have come from historians who themselves work across national boundaries but reject comparison. Michel Espagne has characterized comparison as a relic of structural history, incompatible with the new questions raised by cultural historians and poststructuralist analysis.6 He proposes instead a history of cultural transfer: accounts of points of contact, of movements that traveled, of ideas that were exchanged. Along similar lines, Bénédicte Zimmermann, Claude Didry, and Peter Wagner have insisted on the merits of histoire croisée, or intersecting histories. Comparative history— they charge—reifies the nation, obscuring the dynamic relations that ob- tained across national boundaries.7 Both cross-national and comparative studies stake their claim to legitimacy on the ability, through multicountry analysis, to see something that a focus on one nation obscures. In that sense they can be animated by similar impulses. Both share a restlessness and chafe at the boundaries of single- nation studies. But comparative and cross-national approaches also have different motivations and can yield very different types of findings. After all, comparative history is concerned fundamentally with differences and similarities, often with questions of causality. Cross-national histories, by contrast, can tell us about transnational circulation, about the history of cultural transfer, about international phenomena, as in Daniel Rodgers’s recent book on social work, Atlantic Crossings.8 And, for that matter, a number of comparative histories (maybe the best) are also cross-national histories, such as Charles Maier’s Recasting Bourgeois Europe.9 Given the real differences of aims and outcomes between the two approaches, cross-national history is not—despite what its advocates claim— likely to render comparison obsolete. As Grew reminds us, comparison in history is not a method entailing a single type of inquiry but a set of approaches and “a kind of attitude”; it is, as George Fredrickson terms it, an “imagination.”10 However, Espagne is right to point to the sympathies between cross-national and cultural or intellectual history, whereas comparative history, if it has flourished anywhere, has prospered in social

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 24 and political fields in subjects such as welfare, labor and class, and, most recently, war.11 This essay began as a set of prefatory remarks to a workshop on “Eu- rope in Comparative and Cross-National Perspective” that I organized with Maura O’Connor of the University of Cincinnati. Co-sponsored by the GHI and the Taft Fund of the University of Cincinnati, the workshop brought together historians who had worked either cross-nationally or comparatively, and asked them to reflect on both the gains—as well as the obstacles and costs—of such research. We chose to invite historians rather than the political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, and literary critics who have made comparison a stock in trade because we wished to discuss our own discipline’s expectations and standards. Our goal is a book that will serve as an introduction to graduate students and scholars who wish to pursue cross-national or comparative projects. In line with the objectives of the conference I begin here with observations about the perils of comparative research for historians, turn next to its pleasures, and conclude with some reflections on the kinds of work most likely to succeed. Because the re- wards of comparison have so often been trumpeted, the first section is the longest.

I Comparative history is a tremendously uncertain business. There are many perils that await the unsuspecting. There is the time needed to master different historiographies. There are archival snafus. What happens, for instance, if the researcher is unable to find comparable sources, given different countries’ archival practices? To take just one example of many: Whereas hospital records are plentiful and easily accessible in Britain, in German archives they are both rare and governed by privacy restrictions. There is the awkwardness of structuring and writing comparative books. Should the countries be treated separately or interwoven within chapters? How many times can “by contrast” or “unlike in France” appear within one volume without overtaxing a reader’s patience? And all of these concerns are overshadowed by the worries of whether anyone will indeed read a comparative study. But let me confine myself only to the conceptual dangers. Comparative studies can come to grief in a bewildering variety of ways: because the historian cannot substantiate the distinction she is drawing; because comparison does not evoke anything new; because the comparisons that are drawn cannot answer the problems that are posed. As Thomas Welskopp rightly observes, there has been too much work that compares mindlessly, as if comparison were a worthy aim in itself rather than a means to a larger end.12 Excruciating for the comparativist is the reviewer who states

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 25 that he has learned little or nothing about the case he knows best, or worse, that the historian has committed fundamental errors. Faulty conceptualization is not, of course, solely a failing of comparative history, although it is very glaring there, especially when someone picks up a heavy comparative book, requiring languages and historiographies, and wonders why you have gone to so much trouble for so few genuine discoveries. This may explain why comparative studies rely so heavily on paradox as the point of departure. Most difficult to pull off are those comparisons that take as their object of study apparently analogous phenomena in disparate settings. Three studies—George Fredrickson’s White Supremacy, Peter Kolchin’s Unfree Labor, and Shearer Bowman’s Masters and Lords—demonstrate the problems that dog such topics.13 Widely admired by comparativists for their mastery of the form, both Fredrickson and Kolchin have been taken to task by South African and Russian historians for their characterizations of racial distinctions and serfdom, respectively. What appears to the comparativist as neat and revealing juxtapositions seem to the specialist unwarranted liberties with the historical evidence. Similarly, Bowman’s comparison of slavery in the American South and serfdom in Prussia in the first half of the nineteenth century suffers from its author’s reliance on an outdated portrait of the Junker; German historians seem to have paid little attention to his book. Studies such as these are plagued by very fundamental questions of “comparability.” Are the countries under examination too different to yield meaningful contrasts? Does their juxtaposition for the purpose of comparison eliminate the important distinctiveness of each? An inherently more difficult problem for comparative history is that of local particularities. In its focus on the national unit, and especially on the state, comparative history has tended to obscure the distinctive histories of regions, to homogenize differences under the rubric of the nation. There are, of course, notable exceptions, studies such as Detlef Lehnert’s Kom- munale Politik, which compares local governance in Berlin and Vienna from 1919 to 1932.14 But at a time when some call into question the very existence of the nation, much comparative history is characterized by what seems an old-fashioned sensibility. In part, this focus on the nation and the state has been dictated by the topics chosen. When comparison was concerned primarily with institutions such as welfare states, social movements such as feminism or labor, and periods of transformation such as war and revolution, historians almost necessarily sacrificed rich depictions of the local for the larger prize of national patterns; in each case the state was central. As comparative historians grapple with the history of everyday life (and here Laura Lee Downs’s Manufacturing Inequality offers an excellent example of a comparative history that is also a social history from below), the hetero- geneity contained within nations may enter through the back door.15

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 26 The thorniest of the problems that comparative history raises is that of causality. The problem becomes especially acute in bipartite, or two-country, comparisons and most difficult of all in those cases that focus on differences. In attempting to explain why X happened or developed in country A and not in country B, comparative studies tend to place their explanatory weight on a few factors. Put differently, a focus on why (in a narrow sense) replaces attention to how. My own work offers an example.16 In tracing why German veterans, who received comparatively generous pensions and the best social services in Europe, turned against the Weimar Republic that favored them, whereas British veterans, neglected by successive governments, proved loyal subjects, it is the role of the public—and voluntarism— that proves crucial. Veterans in both countries suffered shabby treatment at the hands of the state; the critical difference was how they felt about their fellow citizens. Although I note other fundamental differences between interwar Britain and Germany (perhaps most important, the barriers to extraparliamentary action and the war’s resolution), they serve principally as context and not as explanation. In its search for causes my book follows in a time-honored, although to me now not entirely satisfactory, vein. Fredrickson has summarized the prevailing tradition: “For most historians and social scientists, comparative history is a way of isolating the critical factors or independent vari- ables that account for national differences.”17 But is it in fact possible to build arguments by isolating critical factors? And how do historians, who are, after all, not white-coated rationalists operating in a laboratory, disen- tangle one factor from the other? If we demonstrate that Protestantism was not necessary for the development of capitalism in country A, have we necessarily diminished its significance in country B? What is beyond dispute is that Protestantism cannot, as a rule, entirely explain the development of capitalism writ large. Comparison thus makes a large dent in the “generalizing” explanations of the comparative historical sociologist or political scientist. However, within the individual case the significance of Protestantism cannot be dismissed so easily, nor even can its primacy be cast in doubt. If similar phenomena have different causes and if divergent outcomes stem from apparently related factors, how do we isolate the critical vari- ables as Fredrickson proposes? Rather than being “a technical instrument . . . capable of giving positive results,” as in Bloch’s description, comparison may well lead the researcher into deep and murky waters. Sophisticated causal explanations require more than sifting through independent vari- ables. After all, revolution Y and Z may share a precipitating event, which masks deeper—and divergent—underlying explanations. At issue is the interplay between different factors, left unaccounted for in Fredrickson’s for-

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 27 mulation. Variable X may function very differently in countries A and B, depending on the context. In country A, it may be of primary importance, in country B, only of negligible significance. Every comparativist who seeks explanations for differences eventually confronts the problem of distinguishing the causal from the contextual. The causal is the explanation, while the contextual furnishes the background. Whereas national historians’ arguments tend toward the multicausal, drawing on all of the factors that can explain a particular phenomenon, comparativists are often caught in a mono- or bicausal trap. How, after all, can national differences be satisfactorily explained by reference to national differences? Comparative books often begin with a chapter on context before setting out an argument intended to demonstrate that the factors often taken as the self-evident cause of X phenomenon do not suffice to explain what happened—that there was a more powerful force (or forces) at work, re- vealed by attention to similar or different developments in another country. As might be expected, the weight of the explanation falls on tangibles: movements whose strength can be measured, a class whose predominance is unchallenged, welfare programs whose growth can be charted. Most often, the cultural and ideological context is shorted in favor of such structural elements. If comparativists still carry the lonely banner of causality, it is, generally speaking, a very particular kind of causal explanation that we offer. The point here is not that comparativists should abandon the search for causes but that we should pursue it more alive to the costs. In his illuminating study of universities in the German Democratic Republic, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, John Connelly explains his solution to the problem: “Political culture is part of the story but also part of the explanation.”18 Connelly’s is a frank acknowl- edgment of the difficulty of distinguishing context from cause: The reader in search of a tidy explanation will not find it. His overriding aim is to demonstrate the variation in East Central Europe.

II So why should we compare? Front and center, as American exceptionalism and the Sonderweg demonstrate, because we do it anyway—and usually badly. There are the normal pleasures of reading widely, of attention to interdisciplinary debates (by no means confined to comparativists), the genuine discipline that comparison imposes on those who tend toward pointilism. For graduate students comparison can provide a first line of defense against obscurantism; it forces one, at an early stage, to answer why the project matters and to engage different historiographies.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 28 Let me offer two principal reasons to compare: First, although not as often as one might wish, comparison provides a counterfactual glimpse that illuminates a path not taken, policies not pursued, which serve to throw a wrench in overdetermined historical narratives. Comparison can return contingency to history. Comparison can lead the historian to ask questions that spark genuinely new interpretations. Bloch’s study of enclosure is the most famous (and most oft-cited) example. Peter Baldwin’s juxtaposition of the British welfare state with the Scandinavian system (as contrasted to the French and German models) is a marvelous example of revelation-by- association. Susan Pedersen’s inquiry into the failure of the British feminists’ campaign for family allowances led her to a little-known chapter in the development of the French welfare state: employers’ efforts to disag- gregate the male wage by offering family allowances to their workers. In my own work the predominance of voluntarism in Britain caused me to wonder what had happened to the German charities that had dominated provision for disabled soldiers in the first years of the Great War. This question, essentially a comparative starting point, opened a story that had gone largely untold: the regulation of charities by state authorities from the last years of the war through the Weimar Republic. More often, what comparisons illuminate are not hitherto unknown developments but the significance of institutions and phenomena that national historians take for granted. Fredrickson’s splendid comparison of South Africa and the American South, White Supremacy, did not uncover any smoking guns but served to place the development and the hardening of racial categories in a new and enlightening context. Similarly, Christoph Jahr’s recent study of deserters in the British and German armies during the First and Second World Wars demonstrated, through painstakingly compiled empirical evidence, the strange legacy of a British army that was notably out of step with civilian public opinion.19 In my own case the renowned tradition of British voluntarism proved more than simply a national pecu- liarity; charities served to check veterans’ radicalism by brokering a truce between the grateful public and those who had suffered. Comparison can also modify historiographic excesses. In Connelly’s work, the GDR, when compared with the Polish and the Czech cases, appears still more authoritarian than the recent literature on resistance in East Germany would allow. What sorts of comparisons work best? Those historians who have com- mented on the subject point to “middle-range” comparisons. According to Grew, “comparison is most enlightening when . . . attention is paid to the intricate relationships between the elements compared and the particular societies in which they are located. . . . The search is for patterns of behavior and circumscribed hypotheses, and it is as likely to result in the recognition

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 29 of unexpected connections between aspects of society previously thought to be unrelated as in general theory.”20 According to both Grew and Baldwin, studies aimed at this middle range avoid the stratospheric heights of social-scientific abstraction.21 Less clear from their descriptions is what might constitute too microscopic a topic. What, for instance, might a comparative microhistory reveal? Johannes Dillinger’s reflections on the differences between American spiritualism and German sectarianism, as viewed through the cases of the New York Fox sisters and a late eighteenth-century Würt- temberg ghost sect, indicate the promise of a comparative microhistorical approach.22 Least likely to go wrong are those topics that begin from a point of relation, those that seemed to contemporaries themselves inherently comparative. When you work on these kinds of topics, you uncover a rich international discussion that itself revolves around similarities and differences. This is what Nancy Green calls the “interactive comparative method” in her insightful book about the garment industries in Paris and New York, Ready-to-Wear and Ready-to-Work.23 There are many fine examples of this type of comparison, among them Charlotte Tacke’s excellent study of monuments in nineteenth-century France and the German states, and along similar lines, Michael Jeismann’s account of French and German images of the enemy.24 The comparativist thus has the opportunity to say something not merely about the national contexts but about a wider phenomenon. Here, comparison has the potential for demonstrating something that historians do not already know without casting events, classes, or statistics adrift from their social moorings. Along these same lines, we should not hold doggedly to the nation as the principal unit of comparison. As Heinz-Gerhard Haupt has suggested, we should also seek out other “entities of comparison.”25 The problem of homogenizing the differences within nations is a real one and should be taken seriously. Studies of cities, studies of regions, more local comparisons of institutions: All of these are potentially lower-risk strategies that preserve particularities. An elegant and short example of this genre is the historical sociologist Howard Kimeldorf’s Reds or Rackets, a study of why and how long- shoremen in New York got tied up with the Mob while their counterparts in San Francisco became communists.26 Seen from this vantage point all history is—at base—comparative, although often not explicitly so. Finally, we ought, both as comparativists and as the patient audience that they hector, to lower our expectations of what the “method” can achieve. In 1928 Marc Bloch described the comparative method thus: “The historical specialist asks for a method which is a technical instrument, generally used, easily manageable, and capable of giving positive results. . . . The comparative method is precisely such an instrument.”27 This faith in com-

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 30 parison has been shown in the last seventy-odd years to have been mis- placed. Rather than chasing the divine revelations that comparisons grant on occasion, we might content ourselves with smart juxtapositions, with parallel histories that shed light on cross-national phenomena. Compari- son was, in Bloch’s words, “a powerful magic wand” that allowed historians to see beyond local conditions to develop more comprehensive explanations.28 Looking back over the literature and my own experiences, we should be on guard—lest Bloch’s “magic wand” become, like the trick in some modern-day evangelical conjuring act, a poisonous snake.

Notes

My thanks to Maura O’Connor and the participants in the GHI-Taft workshop, “Europe in Cross-National and Comparative Perspective,” especially Peter Baldwin, Nancy Green, Su- san Grayzel, and Michael Miller. I am grateful to Becky Conekin, Peter Mandler, Susan Pedersen, Vanessa Schwartz, and Adam Tooze for their suggestions on this piece. 1 Marc Bloch, “Pour une histoire comparée des sociétés européennes,” paper delivered at the Sixth International Congress of Historical Sciences held in Oslo in 1928 and printed in Revue de synthèse historique 46 (1928): 15–50; Marc Bloch, “Toward a Comparative History of Euro- pean Societies,” in Frederic C. Lane, ed., Enterprise and Secular Change: Readings in Economic History (London, 1953), 494–5. 2 Jürgen Kocka and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, Geschichte und Vergleich: Ansätze und Ergebnisse international vergleichender Geschichtsschreibung (Frankfurt am Main, 1996). 3 Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (New York, 1984). 4 Among others, see Theda Skocpol and Margaret Somers, “The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 22 (1980): 174–97; Antoon van den Braembussche, “Historical Explanation and Comparative Method: Towards a Theory of the History of Society,” History and Theory 28 (1989): 1–24. 5 Raymond Grew, “The Case for Comparing Histories,” American Historical Review 85, no. 4 (Oct. 1980): 773. 6 Michel Espagne, “Sur les limites du comparatisme en histoire culturelle,” Genèses 17 (Sept. 1994): 102–21; Michel Espagne, Les transferts culturels franco–allemands (Paris, 1999); see also Wolfgang Schmale, Historische Komparatistik und Kulturtransfer (Bochum, 1998). 7 Bénédicte Zimmermann, Claude Didry, and Peter Wagner, Le travail et la nation: Histoire croisée de la France et de l’Allemagne (Paris, 1999), 4. 8 Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, Mass., 1998). 9 Charles Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe (Princeton, N.J., 1975). 10 Grew, “The Case,” 776–7; George M. Fredrickson, The Comparative Imagination: On the His- tory of Racism, Nationalism, and Social Movements (Berkeley, Calif., 1997). 11 Examples include Susan Pedersen, Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914–1945 (Cambridge, 1993); Peter Baldwin, The Politics of Social Solidarity: Class Bases of the European Welfare State, 1875–1975 (Cambridge, 1990); Peter Baldwin, Conta- gion and the State, 1830–1930 (New York, 1999); Gerhard A. Ritter, Der Sozialstaat: Entstehung und Entwicklung im internationalen Vergleich (Munich, 1991); Alisa Klaus, Every Child a Lion: The

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 31 Origins of Maternal and Infant Health Policy in the United States and France, 1890–1920 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1993); Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, “Womanly Duties: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, 1880–1920,” American Historical Review 95 (1990): 1076–108; Michael Geyer, “Ein Vorbote des Wohlfahrts- staates: Die Kriegsopferversorgung in Frankreich, Deutschland und Grossbritannien nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9 (1983): 230–77; Stefan Berger, The British Labour Party and the German Social Democrats, 1900–1931 (Oxford, 1994); John N. Horne, Labour at War: France and Britain, 1914–1918 (Oxford, 1991); John Breuilly, Labour and Liberalism in Nineteenth- Century Europe: Essays in Comparative History (Manchester, 1992); Christiane Eisenberg, Deutsche und englische Gewerkschaften: Entstehung und Entwicklung bis 1878 im Vergleich (Göttingen, 1986); Jürgen Kocka, Bürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert, 3 vols. (Munich, 1988); Susan Grayzel, Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France During the First World War (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1999); Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert, Capital Cities at War: Paris, Lon- don, Berlin, 1914–1919 (Cambridge, 1997). 12 Thomas Welskopp, “Stolpersteine auf dem Königsweg: Methodenkritische Anmerkungen zum internationalen Vergleich in der Gesellschaftsgeschichte,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 35 (1995): 339–67; Werner Daum, “Fallobst oder Steinschlag: Einleitende Überlegungen zum historischen Vergleich,” in Helga Schnabel-Schüle, ed., Vergleichende Perspektiven—Perspektiven des Vergleichs: Studien zur europäischen Geschichte von der Spätantike bis ins 20. Jahrhundert (Mainz, 1998), 1–21. 13 Shearer Davis Bowman, Masters & Lords: Mid-Nineteenth-Century U.S. Planters and Prussian Junkers (New York, 1993); George M. Fredrickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History (New York, 1981); George M. Fredrickson, Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa (New York, 1995); Peter Kolchin, Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom (Cambridge, 1987). 14 Detlef Lehnert, Kommunale Politik: Parteiensystem und Interessenkonflikte in Berlin und Wien 1919–1932 (Berlin, 1991). 15 Laura Lee Downs, Manufacturing Inequality: Gender Division in the French and British Metal- working Industries, 1914–1939 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995). 16 Deborah Cohen, The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939 (Berkeley, Calif., 2001). 17 George M. Fredrickson, “From Exceptionalism to Variability: Recent Developments in Cross- National Comparative History,” Journal of American History 82, no. 2 (Sept. 1995): 587. 18 John Connelly, Captive University: The Sovietization of East German, Czech, and Polish Higher Education, 1945–1956 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2000), 283. 19 Christoph Jahr, Gewöhnliche Soldaten: Desertion und Deserteure im deutschen und britischen Heer 1914–1918 (Göttingen, 1998). 20 Grew, “The Case,” 773. 21 Baldwin, Politics of Social Solidarity, 39. 22 Johannes Dillinger, “American Spiritualism and German Sectarianism: A Comparative Study of the Societal Construction of Ghost Beliefs,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 28 (spring 2001): 55–73. 23 Nancy Green, Ready-to-Wear and Ready-to-Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris (Durham, N.C., 1997). 24 Charlotte Tacke, Denkmal im sozialen Raum: Nationale Symbole in Deutschland und Frankreich im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1995); Michael Jeismann, Das Vaterland der Feinde. Studien zum nationalen Feindbegriff und Selbstverständnis in Deutschland und Frankreich 1792–1918 (Stuttgart, 1992).

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 32 25 Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, “Die international vergleichende Geschichtswissenschaft: Ein Relikt der Strukturgeschichte?” unpublished paper, German Historical Institute, 2000. 26 Howard Kimeldorf, Reds or Rackets? The Making of Radical and Conservative Unions on the Waterfront (Berkeley, Calif., 1988). 27 Bloch, “Toward a Comparative History,” 495. 28 Ibid., 501.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 33 GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 34 GHI RESEARCH

SCIENTISTS, SCHOLARS, AND THE STATE: GERMANY AND THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD WAR I

Christoph Strupp I On April 6, 1917, after a lengthy and painstaking debate between interven- tionists and neutralists, the United States finally turned from bystander to combatant in World War I and declared war on the German Reich. A few weeks later President Woodrow Wilson signed the Selective Service Act, which brought the draft to the United States for the first time since the Civil War. When, on the very same day, former president Theodore Roosevelt asked permission to raise two divisions for service at the front, Wilson turned down the rather bizarre offer because “this is not the time or the occasion for compliment or for any action not calculated to contribute to the immediate success of the war. The business now in hand is undramatic, practical, and of scientific definiteness and precision.”1 “Scientific definiteness and precision”—keywords in a war of a new kind, because for the first time there were “entire nations armed. . . . It is not an army that we must shape and train for war; it is a nation.”2 In the twentieth century war had become “total war,”3 and the strength of a nation no longer depended on its army alone. Of equal importance was the “war potential” of a country: economic capacity, administrative competence, and the motivation for war. Modern war called for the advanced administrative skills of a government in order to maximize output from the given resources of the nation. It required a great deal of planning and control in areas such as labor supply, allocation of productive factors, and optimiza- tion of the process of production.4 Wilson had been an advocate of efficiency in administration and fore- saw the growing importance of university-trained experts early on. Yet, in 1912 he had publicly warned against “a government of experts” because it would take power out of the hands of the people, thereby endangering democracy.5 Now, in order to face the task ahead and make the necessary decisions, Wilson called on the principles of science. He met little resistance among its foremost representatives—the scientists and scholars of

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 35 the leading universities and research institutions of the country. In fact, as early as 1915 the famous inventor Thomas A. Edison had launched an ini- tiative for war-oriented technical research, leading to the creation of the Naval Consulting Board in the fall of that year. In April 1916 Wilson had been approached by members of the National Academy of Science, headed by the astrophysicist George Ellery Hale, who offered their help to the government in future crises. In June 1916 the National Research Council (NRC) was formed, which would become the most important instrument for the mobilization of science after America’s entry into World War I.6 The NRC attempted to coordinate scientific work for the government and drew on large research facilities throughout the country. It stood in close contact with the various departments of the government, with the U.S. Army and Navy, and—through offices in London and Paris—with research institutions abroad. In the United States the NRC was organized in several commit- tees, covering scientific fields from aeronautics, agriculture, and anatomy to chemistry, engineering, and gases, to psychology, submarines, and zoology; the chemistry committee alone had more than thirty subcommittees.7 Less important organizations, with similar tasks of coordinating research and personnel for war work, were the Intercollegiate Intelligence Bureau, founded in February 1917, and the Committee on Patriotic Service of the American Association of University Professors, headed by the Harvard historian Charles Haskins. Concurrently, after Wilson’s April 1917 announcement, a steady stream of individual experts from the leading universities poured into Washing- ton, D.C., looking for ways to put their special talents to use and willing to accept any kind of government war work. Others were asked to come, often on short notice: “Can you come to Washington soon to consider taking position with me in Food Administration. Wire reply. U.S. Food Adminis- tration Pearl.”8 Natural and social scientists from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, economists, psychologists, and medical doctors took positions in the administration. The traditionally small federal bureaucracy allowed for an easy organizational adjustment to the needs of the war but made it difficult to find the right people for the many new positions.9 In rapid succession new agencies and boards emerged alongside existing government departments.10 The Council of National Defense and its Civilian Advisory Commission, like the NRC, were created in August 1916 even before American entry into the war and were supplemented by the Com- mittee on Public Information, the War Industries Board, the U.S. Food Ad- ministration, the U.S. Fuel Administration, the War Trade Board, the Na- tional War Labor Board, and the U.S. Housing Corporation.11 All of these agencies took scientists and scholars into service, who organized, planned, coordinated, collected data, and wrote reports. In short, these individuals

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 36 were eager to demonstrate the practical use of their knowledge and education and to disprove that they were “in the great test . . . good for nothing.”12 Apart from those individual cases, the war seemed to offer the “young” natural and social sciences as a whole a unique chance to strengthen their positions in the academic world, win public acclaim, and receive generous funding for their research projects. “The time has come for America to recognize the usefulness of the scholar, the thinker, the investigator of science.”13 Possible conflicts between a large-scale commitment to the war effort and basic scientific principles, such as objectivity and rationality—which Wilson had in mind in the first place when he wished for “scientific definiteness and precision”—were neglected or brushed aside.14 “Bang! went Princip’s pis- tol at Sarajevo, and bang! went all the professors,” as a contemporary observer put it drastically a few years after the end of the war.15

II In Germany, World War I—in the words of the leading chemist Fritz Haber of the prestigious Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie—created a new “internal link” between science and the military.16 Haber devoted his institute entirely to research on chemical warfare and served as head of the chemical division of the Prussian War Depart- ment at the rank of army captain.17 But did the war also deepen the relationship between science and the state? Because German universities were state funded and professors were civil servants appointed by the state governments, there had always been a special relationship between science and politics. The formation of the Kai- ser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften (KWG) in 1911, which financed large-scale, pure-research institutes for leading scientists outside the universities, had emphasized this connection.18 In contrast to the United States, however, there existed a rather advanced and special- ized bureaucracy at the outbreak of the war in August 1914.19 Fueled by the hope of a quick victory, the existing departments and government agencies saw no immediate need for expansion. They offered little opportunity for scientists and scholars looking for engagement on the administrative level. People such as the eminent sociologist Alfred Weber from the University of Heidelberg volunteered for regular army service or were drafted before they were able to find a position where they could apply their professional talents.20 Only in the months and years to come did a number of new institutions in Germany also emerge. The Kriegsrohstoffabteilung run by the entrepreneur Walther Rathenau, which was responsible for the acquisition and distribution of raw materials, was probably the most important of these.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 37 But Rathenau relied on businessmen and engineers, and did not think too highly of economists.21 The Wissenschaftliche Kommission (Scientific Com- mission) of the Prussian War Department, which was established in 1915 and headed by Professor Max Sering of the University of Berlin, gathered economic experts from the universities but did not function as an advisory commission. Rather, it was supposed to prepare a detailed scholarly report on the economic mobilization of Germany after the war as a counterpart to the military reports of the General Staff, as did the so-called Spiethoff Kommission at the Reich Interior Ministry.22 In early 1917, after a year of intense negotiations, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Stiftung für kriegstechnische Wissenschaft came into being. This organization had tasks similar to those of the NRC, but it was unable to improve German military research and project coordination significantly and therefore did not have a lasting impact.23 Nevertheless, even if scientists and scholars in Germany could not find suitable employment in government or military service during the war, like their American colleagues they did whatever they could to prove the importance of their specialties.24 As Charles Franklin Thwing declared with pathos in his book on the role of the American colleges in the war in 1920: “The war was a war waged by scientists and through the sciences. The principles of the sciences were its principles. The methods of the sciences were its methods. . . . Such a fundamental use of scientific principles be- longed quite as much to Germany as to the United States and the Allies.”25

III It is this commitment of scientists and scholars, and the willingness of the political leadership and society as a whole to agree to that commitment, that allows us to characterize World War I as a war of a new type, that is, a “scientific” war. My research project investigates this phenomenon in detail by means of a comparative case study of the developments in the United States and Germany. The involvement of scientists and scholars can be understood as an aspect of the “scholarization of the social” (“Verwissenschaftlichung des Sozialen”), which has been identified as a fundamental feature of social development in the twentieth century. Lutz Raphael defines it as “the permanent presence of scholarly experts, their arguments and research results in administrations and enterprises, parties and parliaments, and the everyday mental horizons of social groups, classes, or milieus.”26 Furthermore, it stands at the beginning of a new type of government, which increasingly relies on the knowledge and authority of scientific and scholarly “experts.” Today it seems almost impossible for a government to deal with a political

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 38 problem—from energy and environmental policies to questions of national health and education, to labor and social security matters—without hear- ings, commissions, and individual experts giving advice, backed up by their scientific knowledge.27 The emergence of the “knowledge society” and its implications has become a popular subject for public intellectual debate as well as for sociological and philosophical research. Sociologists and philosophers of science have discussed different rules of the production and use of knowledge, the pretended superiority of “scientific” knowledge, the desire for orientation, objectification, and consensus in social conflicts, matters of control and the repercussion of the practical uses of social science on the discipline, and the different levels of application.28 Works that treat the relationship between science, research, and society from a historical perspective are still rare, though. Scholarization is a phenomenon that has developed in all Western societies with varying intensity during the last decades. The modern scholar or scientist is one of the new “basic characters” of the twentieth century.29 Therefore, the investigation of scholarization as a case study on World War I should not be restricted to one country but should approach its subject comparatively.30 Comparisons are by now a widely accepted methodological tool in historiography. The systematic comparative analysis of historical phenomena stresses either contrasts between two or more cases, or similarities, thus leading to generalizations and the identification of universal historical “types.” It stimulates a fresh look at historical problems, profiles individual cases, and calls common explanations into question.31 With regard to science and World War I, comparison helps us avoid a narrow and descriptive disposition that could easily lead to mere enumeration of scientists and their fields of work in the war. Only through a comparative approach will it be possible to clearly mark the different problems to which scholars and scientists turned their attention or were asked to find solutions for in the war, and to measure their overall impact. A number of books with a transnational focus have been published recently on the epoch of World War I, partly initiated by the Centre de recherches de l’historial de la Grande Guerre in Péronne. But most of these do not belong to the field of comparative historiography. They concentrate on the European powers and deal with the cultural meaning of the war, personal experiences, and questions of everyday life in the trenches and at home.32 German–American studies of the decade of World War I are rare and have largely been a result of joint initiatives by German historians.33 In that context it has been a matter of controversial discussion how these two politically, socially, and culturally different countries responded to the challenge of the war and whether similarities or distinctions were the dominating factor on the level of everyday political measures and experiences of

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 39 this time.34 This question, too, can be answered only through a detailed case study.

IV World War I did not have the same historical significance for the United States that it had for European countries.35 Accordingly, it has not received the same attention in historical research as have the Civil War, World War II, or the Vietnam War, even though the number of books and articles that have come out over the years is by no means small.36 An overview of recent research shows a methodological shift away from political history, in line with general tendencies in American historiography.37 Since the late 1960s a variety of aspects of life and politics on the “home front” have been the subject of sound historical studies: the new political agencies, the war economy, the national and international propaganda activities, social politics, women and the war, the “nationalization” of the American people, and the establishment and experience of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF).38 Whereas some work has been done on the role of the sciences and the universities in the war, the phenomenon and impact of the scientific and scholarly experts and their relation to the government in a broader context remain to be explored.39 In Germany the scholarly debate has been overshadowed for decades by the question of whether Germany was indeed to blame for the outbreak of World War I, as Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles states. Large research projects, like the publication in the 1920s of the German documents on foreign policy after 1871, were entirely motivated by the “Kriegs- schuldfrage”—the question of war guilt. Until the late 1960s most research concentrated on aspects of foreign and military politics of the Kaiserreich. Since then attention has shifted considerably, and a growing number of books focus on internal developments,40 most recently on the “war experience” of the fighting soldier and the people on the home front. Classical political and military sources have been supplemented by personal diaries and war correspondence, newspapers, and statistics.41 Historians at first dealt with the entanglement of science and war by looking at the countless patriotic public manifestos and declarations by prominent German scientists and scholars, such as the infamous “Aufruf an die Kulturwelt” and the “Erklärung der Hochschullehrer des Deutschen Reiches,” both published in October 1914, the latter signed by more than 3,000 German professors.42 In addition to this purely “intellectual” war work, recently the more concrete engagement of practical sciences, like medicine, psychology, and physiology, has become the subject of in-depth studies.43

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 40 They reveal that medical professors, just like their colleagues from the humanities, often willingly sacrificed their scientific and ethical ideals in favor of the political demands of the day: The leading psychiatrist Robert Gaupp saw it as his main task in the war to save the Reich from “an accumulation of mental invalids and lifelong pensioners” instead of helping patients who suffered shell-shock and other war-related mental disabilities.44 But a more general look at the relationship between science and war in Germany remains a blank in literature, as Mitchell Ash pointed out prominently in his inaugural lecture at the University of Vienna a short while ago.45

V My own research departs from a perspective that focuses on individuals or single disciplines. It does not seek to criticize the entanglement of fields of science in the belligerence or the patriotic commitment of professors. In this sense it will not contribute to a history of science as it is usually defined in the Anglo–American academic world. It will not be a series of por- traits of scientists or scientific institutions; rather, my goal is to concentrate on the impact of a variety of concepts and ideas on the new forms of war organization that developed during World War I. I focus on the needs and demands of the political and military leadership, and what they expected from the services of scientists and scholars. Surely, ideas on science in general differed widely in Germany and America, as did the social positions of the sciences. In America the strong involvement of the social sciences in the war was a logical outcome of the practical and application-oriented scientific ideas of the Progressive movement. This movement, having increasingly gained influence after the 1890s, aimed at the improvement of society through the use of professional, ratio- nal, and objective knowledge. This kind of knowledge was meant to serve as a basis for reforms affecting broad areas of society.46 In industry the ideas of Frederick W. Taylor and his concept of “scientific management” became salient and much debated.47 Federal institutions such as the Bureau of Stan- dards, the Commission on Economy and Efficiency, and the New York Bu- reau of Municipal Research, as well as independent institutions like the Committee on Industrial Relations and the Institute for Government Re- search, were established after 1900—harbingers of the intensifying relationship between science and the state that would develop after 1917. In Germany the sciences and humanities were widely respected, but in a different way. Here, too, the influence of practical research in the social sciences had been on the rise since the last decades of the nineteenth century. It had offered solutions to a number of problems, such as social policy,

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 41 urban reform, the modernization of law, and so on. The demand for scientifically trained professionals and businessmen had led to the creation of several new technical colleges (Technische Hochschulen). However, the classical humanities still were the undisputed leaders in the world of the older universities, and they gained their prestige mainly from their distance from practical problems and their concentration on “pure” scholarship.48 These different national characteristics and perceptions of scientific knowledge in Germany and the United States on the eve of World War I must be kept in mind when assessing the influence of scientists and scholars on the organization of the war. At the same time these characteristics make a comparison of the developments in both countries especially interesting because one can distinguish between elements directly related to war—and consequently visible in a similar form in both countries—and elements that were part of different national traditions. For both countries, but probably more so for Germany, the question of a changed understanding of the role of science in society because of the demands of the war needs to be raised. The main body of my study will concentrate on the range of functions that scientists and scholars fulfilled. Of crucial importance for their acceptance was the attempt to directly apply knowledge that was derived from the various special branches of science. This was evident, for example, in the extensive research of physiologists on how to reduce fatigue in soldiers and workers. In Germany the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Arbeitsphysiologie conducted a series of studies for the Prussian War Department on the diets of soldiers and workers, the optimal placement of workers in industrial plants, and efficient personnel selection in the army. In America the Com- mittee on Industrial Fatigue, a subcommittee of the labor division of the Council of National Defense, and the Subcommittee on Muscular Work and Fatigue of the physiology committee of the NRC engaged in similar projects. The driving force behind these were two of the most prominent physiologists in Germany and the United States, Professors Max Rubner of Berlin and Frederic S. Lee of Columbia University.49 Psychologists and medical doctors contributed to this kind of “scientific accompaniment” of the individual through scientifically modernized training programs, intelligence tests and tests of ability, medical instruction, and physical and psychological rehabilitation.50 But scientists and scholars also dealt with the mobilization and steer- ing of society as a whole.51 The Harvard economist Edwin F. Gay went to Washington in April 1917 to work for the privately organized Commercial Economy Board. He educated members of several departments on the importance of the control of large industrial plants through reliable statistical reports. In the fall of 1917 he became involved in solving a serious crisis in the American shipbuilding program, which was largely a result of the lack

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 42 of statistical data. In 1918 Gay was appointed director of the Division of Planning and Statistics of the War Industries Board and established systems for gathering and analyzing large amounts of data that for the first time gave the U.S. government a solid basis for its economic policy.52 The intense propaganda at home and abroad constituted a second area of advanced engagement for scholars. Together with the formation of a “war economy,” which began in Germany in 1916, and because the war lasted longer for the European belligerents than for the United States, this represented a more fundamental break, and the targeted influencing of public opinion at home and in neutral countries was one of the dramatic new developments in World War I. The Committee on Public Information (CPI) in the United States and two German propaganda organizations, the domestic Kriegspresseamt and the Zentralstelle für Auslandsdienst for foreign countries, were supposed to ensure that government measures appeared in a positive light at home and abroad, that Americans and Ger- mans remained committed to war aims, and that public support for the war did not wane.53 Scholars who were involved in the propaganda efforts of their countries applied their professional knowledge—for example, historians wrote brochures and lectured publicly on the historical backgrounds of the conflict—but they rarely applied scientific methods. It was instead a “war service with the weapons of the mind” in the interest of legitimizing government actions. The work in the service of official propaganda also built a bridge to the more general function of “rationally” explaining the war and putting it into perspective historically, philosophically, sociologically, and even biologically as a part of the struggle of the races.54 Finally, scholars fulfilled auxiliary functions in the evaluation of the international press at the Zentralstelle in Germany or the critical observation of the local immigration press through a network of philology professors employed by the CPI in the United States.55 Although far from being complete, this overview of different functions of scholars and scientists in the war should provide a first glimpse at the topics and perspectives of this project. The natural and technical sciences, which were immediately linked to military efforts, will play a less significant role. This is justifiable because both aerial and chemical warfare are already comparatively well researched and because science usually had a different function there.56 Even though it would be possible to speak of the scholarization of belligerence, the application of technical knowledge in modern weaponry or military aids, such as the telephone and optical sig- nal transfer, is not a particularly new historical phenomenon. By structuring the project in the way outlined above I will avoid a narrow focus on particular government institutions or departments immedi-

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 43 ately involved in war research and a simple enumeration of subjects and researchers. Rather, the central questions are: What functions did scientists and scholars serve? What sorts of problems were considered suitable for scientific solutions? For what kind of problems were solutions offered? The project relies on a multitude of archival sources. In America the papers of the government departments, the various war-related institutions, and the American Expeditionary Force—all preserved at the National Archives II in College Park, Maryland—are of crucial importance. In Germany the files of the Reich Interior Ministry at the German Federal Archives in Berlin are the starting point for all aspects of civil administration. Papers of scientific organizations, universities, as well as individual scientists and scholars will be supple- mental.

VI “Scientists, Scholars, and the State”—a case study on the relation between science and war in Germany and the United States—attempts to shed light on a “modern” type of political management marked by the extensive use of concepts and ideas that were developed in the social and natural sciences as well as in the humanities. The exceptional situation of World War I supported the rise of this kind of politics and social organization in the United States, where it could build on an existing tradition, whereas similar developments in Germany can be seen as a noticeable break with the past. Because of the confrontation of different political, military, and scholarly traditions, a comparative view of both countries should yield more valuable insights on the interaction of science, state, and society than a study concentrating on a single nation.

Notes

1 Theodore Roosevelt to Woodrow Wilson, May 18, 1917, and Wilson’s reaction, made public as “A Statement” in the New York Times on the next day, both reprinted in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 42: April 7–June 23, 1917, ed. Arthur S. Link (Princeton, N.J., 1983), 324–6 (quote, 325). 2 Quotes from the proclamation of the draft in its final version, issued on May 18, 1917, reprinted in Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 42: 183. 3 The question of what defines a “total war,” whether it is a useful term at all, and if so when war became total war has recently triggered lively debates among historians. The GHI has sponsored a series of five conferences covering war in Germany and the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the proceedings of the first three published as Stig Förster and Jörg Nagler, eds., On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861–1871 (New York, 1997); Manfred F. Boemeke, Roger Chickering, and Stig Förster, eds., Anticipating Total War: The German and American Experiences, 1871–1914 (New

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 44 York, 1999), with an overview by Roger Chickering, “Total War: The Use and Abuse of a Con- cept,” 13–28; and Roger Chickering and Stig Förster, eds., Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (New York, 2000). See also Stig Förster, “Das Zeitalter des totalen Krieges 1861–1945: Konzeptionelle Überlegungen für einen historischen Strukturvergleich,” Mittelweg 36, no. 6 (1999): 12–29. 4 See the highly stimulating book by Klaus Knorr, The War Potential of Nations (Princeton, N.J., 1956), probably the earliest attempt to give a comprehensive definition of “war potential” and weigh the different factors involved. Knorr pays special attention to administrative skills (99– 160) and even though he concentrates on war after 1945, his book can be an important theoretical framework for any kind of study dealing with the relationship between government and war. For an early contemporary point of view of this question, see William F. Willoughby, Government Organization in War Time and After: A Survey of the Federal Civil Agencies Created for the Prosecution of the War (New York, 1919). 5 James Allen Smith, The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite (New York, 1991), 1–3. 6 David K. van Keuren, “Science, Progressivism, and Military Preparedness: The Case of the Naval Research Laboratory, 1915–1923,” Technology and Culture 33 (1992): 710–36; Daniel J. Kevles, “George Ellery Hale, the First World War, and the Advancement of Science in America,” Isis 59 (1968): 427–37. 7 Second Annual Report of the National Research Council (Washington, D.C., 1918). 8 National Archives II (College Park, Md.), RG 4, box 670, folder D. Telegram from Dr. Raymond Pearl, head of the Statistical Division of the Food Administration, to Dr. Bradley M. Davis, botanist at the University of Pennsylvania, Jan. 18, 1918. Davis replied on Jan. 19, 1918, that it would give him “great pleasure to work with you and for the government,” but that he was also “disturbed over financing the matter.” On Jan. 25 Pearl wrote that because of a reorgani- zation of work at his division he wasn’t sure whether he actually wanted Davis to come; just four days later he wired him again: “Have decided definitely that we need you immediately stop Can pay you three hundred per month stop Position presumably for duration of war.” Davis took over the issuance of the statistical bulletins, and upon his leave in January 1919 Pearl praised him for coming “to us promptly and without hesitation upon call . . . when my needs for men with trained scientific minds and sound judgment was very great” (Letter to Davis, Jan. 28, 1919, ibid.). 9 The White House staff during Wilson’s incumbency, for example, consisted of no more than ten employees, including clerks and typists. Cf. Arthur S. Link and John Whiteclay Chambers II, “Woodrow Wilson as Commander in Chief,” Revue Internationale d’Histoire Militaire 69 (1990): 317–75 (quote, 317). 10 The annual federal expenditures increased 2,500 percent from 1916 to 1919, the federal debt rose from $1 billion (1915) to over $20 billion (1920). On wartime financial policy, see W. Elliot Brownlee, “Social Investigation and Political Learning in the Financing of World War I,” in Michael J. Lacey and Mary O. Furner, eds., The State and Social Investigation in Britain and the United States (New York, 1993), 323–64. 11 Marc Allen Eisner, From Warfare State to Welfare State: World War I, Compensatory State Build- ing, and the Limits of Modern Order (University Park, Pa., 2000), 19–85; Robert D. Cuff, “War Mobilization, Institutional Learning, and State Building in the United States, 1917–1941,” in Lacey and Furner, eds., State and Social Investigation, 388–425; Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (Cambridge, 1982), 234–47. 12 Quoted from William Haller, “Seven Barrels on Democracy,” Columbia University Quarterly 21 (1918): 170–5 (quote, 170), an essay on a fictitious university professor pondering the fate of seven barrels of corn and vegetables he had grown on half an acre of rented land over the summer, after “he had secretly smarted a little at the implied accusation of uselessness that

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 45 had come to him in the spring with the question blanks that had been sent to him by his college, his university, his club, and he forgot what else, demanding to know what he could do for his country.” Apparently the majority of his colleagues in real life had more self-esteem and confidence in the value of their professional knowledge. 13 J. S. Ames, “The Trained Man of Science in the War,” Science n.s. 48 (Oct. 25, 1918): 401–10 (quote, 410). 14 This applied, for example, to those historians who worked at the Division of Civic and Educational Cooperation (DCEC), a subdivision of the Committee on Public Information. Even though its head, the historian Guy Stanton Ford, claimed after the war that “while doing a part of this national task I have been able to maintain the same standards that I have set for myself . . . as a member of the history department of the University of Minnesota” (Guy Stanton Ford, “America’s Fight for Public Opinion,” Minnesota History Bulletin 3 [1919]: 3), the goal of the DCEC, as it was stated in the manifesto of the National Board for Historical Service from April 1917, to provide “historical scholarship for patriotic and educational ends,” was hardly compatible with the objectivity ideal of historical science. Quoted in Gotthard Scholz, “Staatliche Information und Propaganda im Krieg: Das U.S. Committee on Public Information (1917– 1919),” Ph.D. diss., University of Heidelberg, 1967, 64; see also the early contemporary call for action by J. F. Jameson, “Historical Scholars in War-Time,” American Historical Review 22 (1916– 17): 831–5; and Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge, 1988), 116–32. 15 C. Hartley Grattan, “The Historians Cut Loose,” American Mercury 11 (1927): 414–30 (quote, 415). 16 Fritz Haber, “Das Verhältnis zwischen Heereswesen und exakten Naturwissenschaften,” Chemiker-Zeitung 42 (1918): 197. A neglected aspect of collaboration between science and the military even before 1914 was recently featured in an article by Axel Griessmer, “Die kaiserliche Marine entdeckt die Welt: Forschungsreisen und Vermessungsfahrten im Span- nungsfeld von Militär und Wissenschaft (1874–1914),” Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 59 (2000): 61–98. 17 On Haber and World War I, see Margit Szöllösi-Janze, Fritz Haber 1868–1934: Eine Biographie (Munich, 1998), 256–408. 18 On the KWG, see Rudolf Vierhaus and Bernhard vom Brocke, eds., Forschung im Spannungsfeld von Politik und Gesellschaft: Geschichte und Struktur der Kaiser-Wilhelm-/Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (Stuttgart, 1990). 19 For structural changes in the civic administration during the war, see Hans Fenske, “Die Verwaltung im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Kurt G. A. Jeserich, Hans Pohl, and Georg-Christoph von Unruh, eds., Deutsche Verwaltungsgeschichte, vol. 3: Das Deutsche Reich bis zum Ende der Monarchie (Stuttgart, 1984), 866–908; for the background in general, see Lutz Raphael, Recht und Ordnung: Herrschaft durch Verwaltung im 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main, 2000). 20 Eberhard Demm, Ein Liberaler in Kaiserreich und Republik: Der politische Weg Alfred Webers bis 1920 (Boppard, 1990), 152–255. Weber served on the Western front at various posts in the Alsace before he was appointed to a position in the Reich Ministry of Finance (Reichsschatzamt) in May 1916. During the war he wrote several published and confidential Denkschriften (memo- randa) on crucial political questions. 21 See his own account of the formation of the KRA and its underlying principles: Walther Rathenau, “Deutschlands Rohstoffversorgung: Vortrag, gehalten in der ‘Deutschen Gesellschaft 1914’” (Dec. 20, 1915), in Walther Rathenau, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5: Wirtschaft, Staat und Gesellschaft (Berlin, 1925), 23–58, where he laconically states that the occasional interventions of professors, “who said everything we were doing was wrong and we’d have to start over . . . led to terrible paperwork but didn’t harm us in the end” (37). For German economic policy in general, see most recently Regina Roth, Staat und Wirtschaft im Ersten Weltkrieg: Kriegs- gesellschaften als kriegswirtschaftliche Steuerungsinstrumente (Berlin, 1997).

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 46 22 Karl Demeter, Die Spiethoff-Kommission beim Reichsamt des Innern (Potsdam, 1928). Cf. also Franz Eulenburg, “Die wissenschaftliche Behandlung der Kriegswirtschaft,” Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 44 (1917–18): 775–85. 23 Manfred Rasch, “Wissenschaft und Militär: Die Kaiser Wilhelm Stiftung für kriegstechnische Wissenschaft,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 49 (1991): 73–120. 24 A look at scientific and scholarly journals of the time gives a first impression. See, e.g., F. Frech, “Die Naturwissenschaften im Kriege,” Die Naturwissenschaften 3 (1915): 1–6, 101–10; O. Baschin, “Meteorologie und Kriegführung,” Die Naturwissenschaften 3 (1915): 242–6; Albrecht Hase, “Die Zoologie und ihre Leistungen im Kriege 1914/1918,” Die Naturwissenschaften 7 (1919): 105–12; “Stellung und Tätigkeit der Chemiker im Heere während des Weltkrieges,” Chemiker-Zeitung 41 (1917): 833, 853, 893; 42 (1918): 41–2, 49, 73, 97, 349. The Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik devoted its entire volume 40 (1915) to the war, with articles on social, economic, and political problems of the war by Georg Bernhard, Lujo Brentano, Edgar Jaffé, Emil Lederer, Robert Michels, and others. 25 Charles Franklin Thwing, The American Colleges and Universities in the Great War, 1914–1919 (New York, 1920), 115. 26 Lutz Raphael, “Die Verwissenschaftlichung des Sozialen als methodische und konzeptionelle Herausforderung für eine Sozialgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 22 (1996): 165–93 (quote, 166). See also the contemporary observation by the American physicist E. H. Johnson in 1918 that “survival hereafter may be synonymous with successful competi- tion in a new world where scientific method based upon ever-increasing scientific information is the dominating factor in existence” (E. H. Johnson, “The Newer Demands on Physics and Physics Teachers Due to the War,” Science n.s. 48 [Aug. 2, 1918]: 101–08 [quote, 102]). 27 This by no means implies that politicians actually base their decisions on this type of advice or that it has indeed always a quality superior to other information ressources influencing the policy process. Cf. the highly critical study by David Collingridge and Colin Reeve, Science Speaks to Power: The Role of Experts in Policy Making (London, 1986). 28 See Ulrich Beck and Wolfgang Bonß, eds., Weder Sozialtechnologie noch Aufklärung? Analysen zur Verwendung sozialwissenschaftlichen Wissens (Frankfurt am Main, 1989). Of particular value for historical research are the thoughts of the editors in the introduction (“Verwissenschaftlichung ohne Aufklärung? Zum Strukturwandel von Sozialwissenschaft und Praxis,” 7–45). See various works by Nico Stehr, e.g., Praktische Erkenntnis (Frankfurt am Main, 1991) and Arbeit, Eigentum und Wissen: Zur Theorie von Wissensgesellschaften (Frankfurt am Main, 1994); articles in Ronald Hitzler, ed., Expertenwissen: Die institutionalisierte Kompetenz zur Konstruktion von Wirklichkeit (Opladen, 1994); Mary O. Furner and Barry Supple, eds., The State and Economic Knowledge: The American and British Experiences (Cambridge, 1990); Ronald G. Walters, ed., Scientific Authority in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore, 1997); Thomas L. Haskell, ed., The Authority of Experts: Studies in History and Theory (Bloomington, Ind., 1984); Sanford A. Lakoff, ed., Knowledge and Power: Es- says on Science and Government (New York, 1966); and Barry D. Karl, “The Citizen and the Scholar: Ships that Crash in the Night,” in William H. Kruskal, ed., The Social Sciences: Their Nature and Uses (Chicago, 1982), 101–20. 29 Rudolf Stichweh, “Der Wissenschaftler,” in Ute Frevert and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, eds., Der Mensch des 20. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main, 1999), 163–96. 30 See also John Horne, “Introduction: Mobilizing for ‘Total War,’ 1914–1918,” in John Horne, ed., State, Society, and Mobilization in Europe During the First World War (Cambridge, 1997), 1– 17 (quote, 1): “If we think of the First World War as a transnational or supra-national phenomenon, this relationship [between national mobilization and ‘total war’] constitutes one of its essential dynamics which, along with others, needs to be explored comparatively across national cases, in order for the nature and significance of the war to be better understood.” 31 Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka, “Historischer Vergleich: Methoden, Aufgaben, Probleme; Eine Einleitung,” in Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka, eds., Geschichte und

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 47 Vergleich: Ansätze und Ergebnisse international vergleichender Geschichtsschreibung (Frankfurt am Main, 1996), 9–26; see also Hartmut Kaelble, Der historische Vergleich: Eine Einführung zum 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main, 1999); Chris Lorenz, “Comparative Historiography: Problems and Perspectives,” History & Theory 38 (1999): 25–39; Thomas Welskopp, “Stolper- steine auf dem Königsweg: Methodenkritische Anmerkungen zum internationalen Vergleich in der Gesellschaftsgeschichte,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 35 (1995): 339–67; for an American perspective, see George M. Frederickson, “From Exceptionalism to Variability: Recent Develop- ments in Cross-National Comparative History,” Journal of American History 82 (1995): 587–604. 32 Information on the activities of the Centre can be found on the Internet at www.historial.org. See also the following studies, based on a research project of the Centre: Jay M. Winter and Jean-Louis Robert, Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin, 1914–1919 (Cambridge, 1997); Horne, eds., State, Society and mobilization; Jean-Jacques Becker et al., Guerre et cultures 1914– 1918 (Paris, 1994); Jean-Jacques Becker and Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, eds., Les sociétés européennes et la guerre de 1914–1918: Actes du colloque organisé à Nanterre et à Amiens du 8 au 11 décembre 1988 (Nanterre, 1990). Furthermore, see two monographs that compare Germany and England: Christoph Jahr, Gewöhnliche Soldaten: Desertion und Deserteure im deutschen und britischen Heer 1914–1918 (Göttingen, 1998), and Aribert Reimann, Der große Krieg der Sprachen: Untersuchungen zur historischen Semantik in Deutschland und England zur Zeit des Ersten Weltkriegs (Essen, 2000). Information on the current state of research is found in a 1994 special edition of the Neue Politische Literatur. See especially the introduction by Christof Dipper, “Die Forschung zum Ersten Weltkrieg in vergleichender Perspektive: Einleitende Bemerkungen zu diesem Heft,” Neue Politische Literatur 39 (1994): 185–6, and the general overview by Michael Epkenhans, “Neuere Forschungen zur Geschichte des Ersten Weltkrieges,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 38 (1998): 458–87. 33 Hartmut Lehmann and Hermann Wellenreuther, eds., German and American Nationalism: A Comparative Perspective (New York, 1999); Ragnhild Fiebig-von Hase and Jürgen Heideking, eds., Zwei Wege in die Moderne: Aspekte der deutsch–amerikanischen Beziehungen 1900–1918 (Trier, 1998); Hans-Jürgen Schröder, ed., Confrontation and Cooperation: Germany and the United States in the Era of World War I, 1900–1924 (Providence, R.I., 1993). Most of the articles in both volumes deal more with direct political, economic, and cultural relations than comparisons of parallel developments. In the United States comparative historiography does not have a strong tradition. See Raymond Grew, “The Comparative Weakness of American History,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 16 (1985–6): 87–101; and for the World War I era as an exception, see Jeffrey Haydu, Making American Industry Safe for Democracy: Comparative Perspectives on the State and Employee Representation in the Era of World War I (Urbana, Ill., 1997), who in the first part of his study deals with the relationship between state, industry, and unions in the face of the changed circumstances of the war industry in Germany, England, and the United States. 34 See, e.g., the discussion following the papers by David M. Kennedy and Gerald D. Feldman on the political and economic mobilization in both countries in Schröder, ed., Confrontation, 257–60. 35 This was pointed out once more by David M. Kennedy, “American Political Culture in a Time of Crisis: Mobilization in World War I,” in Schröder, ed., Confrontation, 213–27 (quote, 213–4). 36 See the bibliography by David R. Woodward and Robert Franklin Maddox, America and World War I: A Selected Annotated Bibliography of English-Language Sources (New York, London, 1985); Anne Cipriano Venzon, ed., The United States in the First World War: An Encyclopedia (New York, 1995). The most recent general overview was published by Robert Zieger, America’s Great War: World War I and the American Experience (Lanham, Md., 2000). 37 See Ronald Smelser, “Die amerikanische Weltkriegsforschung,” in Wolfgang Michalka, ed., Der Erste Weltkrieg: Wirkung, Wahrnehmung, Analyse (Munich, 1994), 991–1011, and the broader but by now dated article by Jacob Kipp, “‘Over There’: World War I in Recent American Mili- tary Historiography; An Overview,” in Jürgen Rohwer, ed., Neue Forschungen zum Ersten

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 48 Weltkrieg (Koblenz, 1985), 383–406. Critical of recent interpretations of World War I as dawn of a cultural moderne: Jay M. Winter, “Cultural Politics and the First World War: Recent Anglo/ American Historiographical Trends,” Neue Politische Literatur 39 (1994): 218–23. 38 Kathleen Kennedy, Disloyal Mothers and Scurrilous Citizens: Women and Subversion During World War I (Bloomington, Ind., 1999); Susan Zeiger, In Uncle Sam’s Service: Women Workers with the American Expeditionary Force, 1917–1919 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1999); Paul A. C. Koistinen, Mobilizing for Modern War: The Political Economy of American Warfare, 1865–1919 (Lawrence, Kans., 1997); Nancy K. Bristow, Making Men Moral: Social Engineering During the Great War (New York, 1996); Ronald Schaffer, America in the Great War: The Rise of the War Welfare State (New York, 1991); Neil A. Wynn, From Progressivism to Prosperity: World War I and American Society (New York, 1986); William J. Breen, Uncle Sam at Home: Civilian Mobilization, Wartime Federalism, and the Council of National Defense, 1917–1919 (Westport, Conn., 1984); Valerie Jean Conner, The National War Labor Board: Stability, Social Justice, and the Voluntary State in World War I (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1983); David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and Ameri- can Society (New York, 1980); Stephen Vaughn, Holding Fast the Inner Lines: Democracy, Nation- alism, and the Committee on Public Information (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1980); Robert D. Cuff, The War Industries Board: Business–Government Relations During World War I (Baltimore, 1973); Edward M. Coffman, The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I (New York, 1968). Valuable also is the panoramic picture by Edward Robb Ellis, Echoes of Distant Thunder: Life in the United States, 1914–1918 (New York, 1975; reprint, 1996). In Germany, Jörg Nagler has published his impressive Habilitationsschrift, Nationale Minoritäten im Krieg: “Feindliche Ausländer” und die amerikanische Heimatfront während des Ersten Weltkriegs (Hamburg, 2000). 39 The Business History Review published a special edition on “Experts, War, and the State” in 1994 (vol. 68); Schaffer, America in the Great War, 127–48, deals with just four scholars in his chapter “The University at War: Veblen, Yerkes, Beard, and Cattell”; Kennedy, Over Here, 57– 9, 73–4, mentions the universities on a few pages in connection with the propaganda efforts and the handling of “dissident views”. Still of value are the older books by Carol S. Gruber, Mars and Minerva: World War I and the Uses of the Higher Learning in America (Baton Rouge, La., 1975); and George T. Blakey, Historians on the Home Front (Lexington, Ky., 1970). Individual universitites also have been the objects of scholarly research or have published their own war histories: see, as an example for the first, Richard S. Faulkner, “‘Our patriotic duty at home and abroad’: The University of Georgia in the First World War,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 79 (1995): 920–39; Michael Welsh, “Beyond the Call of Duty: World War I at the University of New Mexico,” New Mexico Historical Review 64 (1989): 25–38; and for the latter, George Henry Nettleton, Yale in the World War, 2 vols. (New Haven, Conn., 1925), vol. 1; Technology’s War Record: An Interpretation of the Contribution Made by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, its Staff, its Former Students and its Undergraduates to the Cause of the United States and the Allied Powers in the Great War, 1914–1919 (Cambridge, Mass., 1920). 40 See the extensive research overview by Bruno Thoß, “Der Erste Weltkrieg als Ereignis und Erlebnis. Paradigmenwechsel in der westdeutschen Weltkriegsforschung seit der Fischer- Kontroverse,” in Michalka, ed., Der Erste Weltkrieg, 1012–43; Gerd Krumeich, “Kriegsgeschichte im Wandel,” in Gerhard Hirschfeld and Gerd Krumeich, eds., “Keiner fühlt sich hier mehr als Mensch ...” Erlebnis und Wirkung des Ersten Weltkriegs (Essen, 1993), 11–24; and in a broader context Thomas Kühne and Benjamin Ziemann, “Militärgeschichte in der Erweiterung: Konjunkturen, Interpretationen, Konzepte,” in Thomas Kühne and Benjamin Ziemann, eds., Was ist Militärgeschichte? (Paderborn, 2000), 9–46. A path-breaking collection of sources was published by Wilhelm Deist, ed., Militär und Innenpolitik im Weltkrieg 1914–1918, 2 vols. (Düsseldorf, 1970). See also Gerald D. Feldman, Army, Industry, and Labor in Germany, 1914– 1918 (Princeton, N.J., 1966); Jürgen Kocka, Klassengesellschaft im Krieg: Deutsche Sozialgeschichte 1914–1918 (Göttingen, 1973); Friedrich Zunkel, Industrie und Staatssozialismus: Der Kampf um die Wirtschaftsordnung 1914 bis 1918 (Düsseldorf, 1974); Ute Daniel, Arbeiterfrauen in der Kriegs- gesellschaft: Beruf, Familie und Politik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen, 1989). The recent overview by Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918 (New York, 1998), also

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 49 focuses on the internal political, social, and cultural development of Germany. A German edition is forthcoming. 41 Gerhard Hirschfeld et al., eds., Kriegserfahrungen: Studien zur Sozial- und Mentalitätsgeschichte des Ersten Weltkriegs (Essen, 1997); Wolfgang Kruse, ed., Eine Welt von Feinden: Der Große Krieg 1914–1918 (Frankfurt am Main, 1997); Bernd Ulrich, Die Augenzeugen: Deutsche Feldpostbriefe in Kriegs- und Nachkriegszeit 1914–1933 (Essen, 1997); Thomas Raithel, Das “Wunder” der inneren Einheit: Studien zur deutschen und französischen Öffentlichkeit bei Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges (Bonn, 1996); Bernd Ulrich and Benjamin Ziemann, eds., Frontalltag im Ersten Weltkrieg: Wahn und Wirklichkeit (Frankfurt am Main, 1994); Hirschfeld and Krumeich, eds., Keiner fühlt sich hier mehr; Wolfram Wette, ed., Der Krieg des kleinen Mannes: Eine Militärgeschichte von unten (Munich, 1992), chap. 2. Bibliographic overviews: Christoph Nonn, “Oh What a Lovely War? German Common People and the First World War,” German History 18 (2000): 97–111; Gerd Krumeich, “Kriegsalltag vor Ort: Regionalgeschichtliche Neuerscheinungen zum Ersten Weltkrieg in Deutschland,” Neue Politische Literatur 39 (1994): 187–202. 42 Klaus Schwabe, Wissenschaft und Kriegsmoral: Die deutschen Hochschullehrer und die politischen Grundfragen des Ersten Weltkrieges (Göttingen, 1969). See also Jürgen von Ungern-Sternberg and Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg, Der Aufruf “An die Kulturwelt!” Das Manifest der 93 und die Anfänge der Kriegspropaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 1996). Into the same category fall the essays in Wolfgang J. Mommsen, ed., Kultur und Krieg: Die Rolle der Intellektuellen, Künstler und Schriftsteller im Ersten Weltkrieg (Munich, 1996); the essay on the economists in the war by Dieter Krüger, “Kriegssozialismus: Die Auseinandersetzung der Nationalökonomen mit der Kriegswirtschaft 1914–1918,” in Michalka, ed., Der Erste Weltkrieg, 506–29; and several works on wartime sociology: Sven Papcke, “Dienst am Sieg: Die Sozialwissenschaften im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Sven Papcke, ed., Vernunft und Chaos: Essays zur sozialen Ideengeschichte (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), 125–42; Hans Joas, “Die Klassiker der Soziologie und der Erste Weltkrieg,” in Hans Joas and Helmut Steiner, eds., Machtpolitischer Realismus und pazifistische Utopie: Krieg und Frieden in der Geschichte der Sozialwissenschaften (Frankfurt am Main, 1989), 179–210, all of which deal with the patriotism of leading sociologists and the influence of the war on sociological theories. 43 Wolfgang U. Eckart and Christoph Gradmann, eds., Die Medizin und der Erste Weltkrieg (Pfaffenweiler, 1996); Paul Weindling, Health, Race, and German Politics Between National Unifica- tion and Nazism, 1870–1945 (Cambridge, 1989), 281–304; Paul Lerner, “Psychiatry and Casualties of War in Germany, 1914–18,” Journal of Contemporary History 35 (2000): 13–28; Doris Kaufmann, “Science as Cultural Practice: Psychiatry in the First World War and Weimar Germany,” Journal of Contemporary History 34 (1999): 125–44; Horst Gundlach, “Faktor Mensch im Krieg: Der Eintritt der Psychologie und Psychotechnik in den Krieg,” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 19 (1996): 131–43; Christoph Hoffmann, “Wissenschaft und Militär: Das Berliner Psychologische Institut und der 1. Weltkrieg,” Psychologie und Geschichte 5 (1994): 261–85. 44 Robert Gaupp, “Hysterie und Kriegsdienst,” Münchener Medizinische Wochenschrift 62 (1915): 361–3 (quote, 362). See the examples of G. Ledderhose, “Sparsame und beschleunigte Wund- behandlung im Kriege,” Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift 40 (Oct 29, 1914): 1911–2, wherein its intention is already given away in the headline, and Oskar Vulpius, “Was hat der Krieg hinsichtlich der Orthopädie Neues gelehrt?” Deutsche Militärärztliche Zeitschrift 47 (1918): 251– 5, who comes to the conclusion that the war demonstrated the importance of orthopedics and frankly demands a more prominent role for his specialty in the university in the future. 45 Mitchell G. Ash, “Die Wissenschaften in der Geschichte der Moderne,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 10 (1999): 105–29 (quote, 123–4); Mitchell G. Ash, “Wissenschaft— Krieg—Modernität: Einführende Bemerkungen,” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 19 (1996): 69–75; Helmuth Trischler, “Die neue Räumlichkeit des Krieges: Wissenschaft und Technik im Ersten Weltkrieg,” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 19 (1996): 95–103; Rasch, “Wissenschaft und Militär”: 73. In this context, see the critical remarks by Arleen Marcia Tuchman, “Institu- tions and Disciplines: Recent Work in the History of German Science,” Journal of Modern History

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 50 69 (1997): 298–319, on the narrow perspective of many recent works on the history of science in Germany (302). 46 Friedrich Jaeger, Amerikanischer Liberalismus und zivile Gesellschaft: Perspektiven sozialer Reform zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 2001); Friedrich Jaeger, “Pragmatismus und Politik: Reformkonzeptionen des ‘Progressive Movement’ zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts,” in Ralph Dietl and Franz Knipping, eds., Begegnung zweier Kontinente: Die Vereinigten Staaten und Europa seit dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Trier, 1999), 211–35; Axel R. Schäfer, American Progressives and German Social Re- form, 1875–1920: Social Ethics, Moral Control, and the Regulatory State in a Transatlantic Context (Stuttgart, 2000); Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science (Cambridge, 1991); Thomas L. Haskell, The Emergence of Professional Social Science: The American Social Science Association and the Nineteenth- Century Crisis of Authority (Urbana, Ill., 1977), and on the hopes for reform during World War I: Robert Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, N.Y., 1991), John A. Thompson, Reformers and War: American Progressive Publicists and the First World War (Cambridge, 1987). 47 Charles D. Wrege and Ronald G. Greenwood, Frederick W. Taylor, the Father of Scientific Man- agement: Myth and Reality (Homewood, Ill., 1991), on Taylor’s early reception in Germany: Jürgen Kocka, “Industrielles Management: Konzeptionen und Modelle in Deutschland vor 1914,” Vierteljahrsschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 56 (1969): 332–72; on Taylorism and World War I, see Aimée Moutet, “La Première Guerre Mondiale et le Taylorisme,” in Maurice de Montmellin and Olivier Pastré, eds., Le Taylorisme: Actes du Colloque international sur le Taylorisme organisé par l’Université de Paris XIII, 2.–4.5.1983 (Paris, 1984), 67–81. 48 Pierangelo Schiera, Laboratorium der bürgerlichen Welt: Deutsche Wissenschaft im 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main, 1992); Woodruff D. Smith, Politics and the Sciences of Culture in Germany, 1840–1920 (New York, 1991); Rüdiger vom Bruch, “Vom Bildungsgelehrten zum wissen- schaftlichen Fachmenschentum: Zum Selbstverständnis deutscher Hochschullehrer im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert,” in Jürgen Kocka et al., eds., Von der Arbeiterbewegung zum modernen Sozialstaat: Festschrift für Gerhard A. Ritter zum 65. Geburtstag (Munich, 1994), 582–600. 49 Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (Berkeley, Calif., 1992), esp. 259–70; Gerhard Albrecht, “Arbeitsgebiet und Ziele des Kaiser-Wilhelm-Instituts für Arbeitsphysiologie,” Technik und Wirtschaft 8 (1915): 284–90; Fritz Stern, Gedanken über Heeresorganisation auf arbeitswissenschaftlicher Grundlage (Berlin, 1917); Alan Derickson, “Physi- ological Science and Scientific Management in the Progressive Era: Frederic S. Lee and the Com- mittee on Industrial Fatigue,” Business History Review 68 (1994): 483–514; Gerald L. Geison, ed., Physiology in the American Context, 1850–1940 (Bethesda, Md., 1987); Richard A. Feiss, “Stimulat- ing Labor Efficiency in War Times,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 78 (1918): 106–11. 50 On the intelligence testing by Robert M. Yerkes and his team of psychologists from Harvard University, see John Carson, “Army Alpha, Army Brass, and the Search for Army Intelligence,” Isis 84 (1993): 278–309, with the older literature; Richard T. von Mayrhauser, “The Manager, the Medic, and the Mediator: The Clash of Professional Psychological Styles and the Wartime Origins of Group Mental Testing,” in Michael M. Sokal, ed., Psychological Testing and American Society, 1890–1930 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1987), 128–57. Yerkes himself published extensively during and after the war on his activities. See, among others, Robert M. Yerkes, “Report of the Psychology Committee of the National Research Council,” Psychological Review 26 (1919): 83– 149. On the tests in Germany, see J. B. Rieffert, “Psychotechnik im Heere,” in Karl Bühler, ed., Bericht über den 7. Kongreß für experimentelle Psychologie in Marburg 1921 (Jena, 1922), 79–96. 51 Early traces of this perspective can be found in Feldman, Army, Industry and Labor, and Kocka, Klassengesellschaft, 105–18, who also points out the growing number of “bourgeois, entrepreneurian and technocratical elements “ among the political and economic elite of the Reich (114). 52 Robert D. Cuff, “Creating Control Systems: Edwin F. Gay and the Central Bureau of Plan- ning and Statistics, 1917–1919,” Business History Review 63 (1989): 588–613; Herbert Heaton, A

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 51 Scholar in Action: Edwin F. Gay (Cambridge, Mass., 1952). In Germany Walther Rathenau en- countered similar problems of a lack of statistics when he began his work at the KRA (see Rathenau, “Deutschlands Rohstoffversorgung,” 30–1). 53 For the United States, see Vaughn, Holding Fast the Inner Lines; Alfred E. Cornebise, War as Advertised: The Four-Minute-Men and America’s Crusade, 1917–1918 (Philadelphia, 1984); Com- plete Report of the Chairman of the Committee on Public Information. 1917. 1918. 1919 (Washington, D.C., 1920); for Germany, see Patrick Ostermann, Duell der Diplomaten: Die Propaganda der Mittelmächte und ihrer Gegner in Italien während des Ersten Weltkrieges (Weimar, 2000); Jens Albes, Worte wie Waffen: Die deutsche Propaganda in Spanien während des Ersten Weltkrieges (Essen, 1996); Jürgen Wilke, “Deutsche Auslandspropaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg: Die Zentralstelle für Auslandsdienst,” in Jürgen Wilke, ed., Pressepolitik und Propaganda: Historische Studien (Köln, 1997), 79–125; Martin Creutz, Die Pressepolitik der kaiserlichen Regierung während des Ersten Weltkriegs: Die Exekutive, die Journalisten und der Teufelskreis der Berichterstattung (Frankfurt am Main, 1996); Ungern-Sternberg and Ungern-Sternberg, Der Aufruf “An die Kulturwelt!” Older studies are by Dirk Stegmann, “Die deutsche Inlandspropaganda 1917/18: Zum innen- politischen Machtkampf zwischen OHL und ziviler Reichsleitung in der Endphase des Kaiserreiches,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 12 (1972): 75–116; Kurt Koszyk, Deutsche Pressepolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Düsseldorf, 1968). Cf. also Ursula Ratz, “Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterbewegung, bürgerliche Sozialreformer und Militärbehörden im Ersten Weltkrieg,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 37 (1985): 9–33. 54 See, e.g., for Germany, Jost Dülffer, “Krieg und Frieden bei Max Scheler,” in Christof Dipper, Lutz Klinkhammer, and Alexander Nützenadel, eds., Europäische Sozialgeschichte: Festschrift für Wolfgang Schieder (Berlin, 2000), 431–45; Emil Lederer, “Zur Soziologie des Weltkrieges” [1915], in Emil Lederer, Kapitalismus, Klassenstruktur und Probleme der Demokratie in Deutschland 1910–1940 (Göttingen, 1979), 119–44. 55 Correspondence and blank forms in National Archives II (College Park, Md.), RG 63, 3-A3. Participating professors were sent forms to fill in and were asked to pay attention to the editorial policy of the paper, information on the situation in Europe and in the United States, advice to aliens, ownership, and number and nature of ads. A second sheet was provided for newspaper clippings. 56 Dieter Martinetz, Der Gaskrieg 1914/18: Entwicklung, Herstellung und Einsatz chemischer Kampfstoffe: Das Zusammenwirken von militärischer Führung, Wissenschaft und Industrie (Bonn, 1996); Christopher Schumacher, “Der deutsche Giftgaseinsatz im Ersten Weltkrieg und sein militärischer Sinn,” Historische Mitteilungen der Ranke-Gesellschaft 9 (1996): 1–65; Hugh R. Slotten, “Humane Chemistry or Scientific Barbarism? American Responses to World War I Poison Gas, 1915–1930,” Journal of American History 77 (1990): 476–98; Olaf Groehler, Der lautlose Tod: Einsatz und Entwicklung deutscher Giftgase von 1914 bis 1945 (Reinbek, 1989); Edward M. Spiers, Chemical Warfare (Urbana, Ill., 1986).

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 52 CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS

GRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY? A COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF COMMUNITIES AND STATE BUILDING IN NEW ENGLAND AND GERMANY, 1500–1850

Workshop at the GHI, February 22–24, 2001. Co-sponsored by Daimler- Chrysler. Convener: Johannes Dillinger (GHI). Participants: Louis Breen (Kansas State University), Christopher M. Duncan (Mississippi State University), Joel F. Harrington (Vanderbilt University), André Holenstein (University of Bern), Elizabeth Mancke (University of Akron), Christof Mauch (GHI), Lutz Raphael (University of Trier), Ulinka Rublack (St. John’s College, Cambridge), Helga Schnabel-Schüle (University of Trier), Werner Troßbach (University of Kassel), Michael Zuckerman (University of Pennsylvania).

Recent historical research has rediscovered the common man and the community as political agents in early modern Germany. Simplistic notions of an omnipotent and omnipresent absolutism are clearly inappropriate to an understanding of the diversified political systems of the German principalities that in many instances were not only threatened by peasant revolts but also positively accepted the participation of village communities in the territorial administration. Communalism—the political activity of rural communities— has to be regarded as one factor in state formation. As Johannes Dillinger pointed out in his introductory lecture, communalist structures and even formal political representation of peasant villages existed in a variety of political systems in early modern western Europe. Swedish tings sent peasant delegates to the Riksdag (parliament) since 1527. A number of principalities in southern Germany and Friesland admitted representatives of villages and village corporations to the regional estates. However, the strongest communalist political system of the early modern period developed in colonial New England. Drawing weighty conclusions from very slim source materials, nineteenth-century historians claimed that local self-government in New En- gland towns and Anglo-Saxon republican traditions had their roots in Germanic antiquity. Of course, these theses, with their speculations about age-old continuities, no longer can be taken seriously. However, a closer look at the political order of communities in Germany and New England during the early modern and revolutionary periods between 1500 and 1850

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 53 reveals similarities and differences that help us understand the civic and administrative life of rural communities as a part of the political culture of the time. In order to examine the role communalism played in state formation the workshop’s participants tried a comparative approach. A synchronic comparison of the forms and aims of early modern community politics in New England and Germany might deepen our understanding of both systems. In recent years American and German historians alike have suggested this type of approach. However, this workshop was the first symposium to address this particular problem of the historiography of state building. The workshop was organized into four panels. Each panel consisted of two lectures that addressed the same specific problem of communal politics in German and American history, respectively. The first panel dealt with communal theology and the significance of religion for early modern communalism. The theology of the covenant and the reformation’s emphasis on the community of the Holy Ghost have been regarded as driving forces behind communalism as a political movement. Helga Schnabel-Schüle pointed to the political realities behind the doctrines of covenant and community theology. By suspending Episcopal jurisdic- tion and confiscating church property the Protestant Reformation put the princes in charge of the church. The dichotomy of church and state was overcome. Therefore, the Reformation strengthened not the rural communities but the territorial states. Even if a part of the peasantry thought of Luther’s teachings as a theology of liberation, the reformer himself had always regarded the Ger- man nobility as his political partner. In contrast, the comparatively weak structure of Catholicism enabled peasants to exercise limited control over the parish church. Thus, ecclesiastical communalism should not be regarded as a feature of the Reformation but rather as a characteristic of traditional Catholicism. Louise Breen examined the social and communal implications of the Antinomian controversy of 1636–8. The followers of Anne Hutchinson, the Antinomians, were considered seditious because they had raised questions about whether the colony’s ministers were properly preaching the covenant of grace. Hutchinson had suggested that the ministers’ emphasis on sancti- fication—or moral behavior rather than justification—constituted works- righteousness. Several members of the colony’s merchant elite, among them the magistrate Israel Stoughton, sided with Hutchinson. They regarded Antinomianism as a way to distance themselves from the governing orthodox clique of Governor Winthrop, who claimed for themselves divine election as rulers. The Antinomian doctrine itself had a political undercurrent. It stressed the importance of the individual and thereby questioned the orthodox emphases on the congregation of God’s elected. Thus, the covenant theology that was at the core of Puritan communalism was threatened by a new ideal of society. The Antinomian vision looked toward the

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 54 modern, “liberal” conceptualization of individual rights and liberties. This concept appealed to urban merchant elites. The orthodox Puritan vision, which prevailed for most of the seventeenth century and was subscribed to by the majority of the colonists, conceived of liberty, or rights, as the property of the entire community, to be enjoyed collectively. Hutchinson’s defeat and exile spelled the victory of a Puritan orthodoxy that combined communalism and the doctrine of divine right. The second panel focused on the interaction between villages and territorial states. André Holenstein questioned the prevailing view that regards the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries as characterized by a constant decline of communalism. Even if peasant communities were marginalized in legal and constitutional theory, in administrative practice they remained a force to be reckoned with. In order to work effectively state administrations needed a detailed knowledge of rural communities. The principalities developed sophisticated systems of information gathering that integrated the villages into the state apparatus. Administration and law enforcement depended on the cooperation of local institutions. Thus, early modern state formation is best understood as a com- municative process in which rural communities learned to use state institutions to express their needs and achieve their ends. The rapid increase of administrative communication from the sixteenth century onward is evidence not only of the aristocratic rulers’ attempts to gain control over the countryside but also of the growing interest of the peasant communities in the services provided by the princely states. What seemed to be the breakdown of communalism really was the self-integration of communities into the territorial order. Elizabeth Mancke pointed to the dichotomy of the British Empire and the American communities in colonial New England. The development of New England communalism was facilitated by the Crown’s lack of interest in this economically unattractive region. The conflict between London and New England concentrated on the interpretation of the charter on which the new settlements were based. The monarchy and its ministers used chartered concerns to claim English dominium in the Americas. The Puritans, in turn, stressed that the colony as a chartered corporation, and the towns as quasi-corporations, were immune to intrusions by the imperial state. The Crown’s decision to revoke the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1684 was finally justified by the fact that the company had founded towns although no corporation was legally allowed to create other corporations. The seventeenth-century constitutional conflict informed the eighteenth-century tensions between the expanding British governance and the American communities. The third panel looked inside the peasant communities. The villages themselves were described as political bodies of their own. As Werner Troßbach pointed out, in German territories local self-government was based

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 55 on grassroots decision making that regulated agricultural work in the open- field system. In the course of the early modern period feudal lordship east of the Elbe River gained an overwhelming position even in this sphere, virtually ending political activity “from below.” West of the Elbe communities preserved and in some areas even enlarged their competencies. Com- munities in several areas could dispose of large properties and were used to appointing shepherds and determining innkeepers’ conditions of lease. Many people’s and families’ fates depended on the communities’ decisions. These decisions were officially made during the town meeting. In the second half of the sixteenth century the “well-ordered police state” became increasingly interested in ordinary people’s lives. Rules con- cerning gambling, swearing, drinking, wedding feasts, and so on had to be administered by communal institutions. However, the state grew ever more concerned with community decisions because the growing wealth of the townspeople could be regarded as a competing source of power. With the growing complexity of these interrelations the aristocratic state tried to gain greater influence on the appointment of the village officeholders. The wide variety of informal public practices, whereby women and sometimes village youths played more important roles than they did in the constitutional bodies, was part of communal life, too. This sphere of grassroots politics—with kinship and patronage relations, gossip and rumor— was essential to communal decision making. Although most communities accepted the ideal of “civic unity,” social inequality was a common feature of village life. Inequality was mitigated by certain rules of social redistribution or moral economy. Village factionalism related to informal alliances. Clientelism and competing kinship and friendship groups were grassroots phenomena as well. Communities were seldom able to solve their conflicts using their own political and legal structures. They increasingly relied on the lordship as a guarantor of peace and order. German communalism seemingly lacked a political vision of its own and had no distinct egalitarian trait. Michael Zuckerman maintained that in spite of all social diversification New England’s political culture was founded on a basic assumption of equality. Zuckerman specifically addressed communal conceptions of authority and local leadership. Despite annual elections the New England colonies produced a stable political elite. This fact has been explained in terms of “deference”: Out of habitual respect for their “betters” the rank-and-file colonists granted political power to a small group of leaders. Zuckerman rejected this interpretation as irreconcilable with the fact that colonial New England was a society in transition. Social control played so prominent a role in New England communal life not because a rigorous order had been established but because the new society and the emerging state were still trying to create this order. With the whole social system in flux authority

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 56 could be based only on personal performance. Thus, the communities could choose as representatives persons whose achievements recommended them for leadership positions. However, early modern New England was no democracy. Its very struggle for structure spelled mutual control as well as self- repression that limited individualism and did not allow for pluralism. The last panel focused on the role rural communities played in the revolutionary period of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Lutz Raphael dealt with the dramatic shifts taking place in Rhineland communities between the Napoleonic conquest and the revolution of 1848–9. Until the end of the ancien régime most Rhenish villages had property rights with respect to forests and open land, and they enjoyed local self-government based on town meetings. After the occupation by the French revolutionary army a new administration was established that did away with all intermediary powers and communal privileges. Under Prussian and Bavarian governance this bureaucratic regime, with its elite of professional officials, was further consolidated and centralized. After 1830 conflicts between village communities, their representatives, and state officials grew more intense, especially when the administration tightened its control over communal property. Com- munalist protest used the ideological languages of liberalism and political Catholicism. After the reactionary monarchies ended the 1848–9 revolution with military force they tried to calm the countryside with economic concessions and more liberal administrative practices. Whereas the rural elite finally came to terms with the state administration, the village poor were unable to profit from the transformation of the countryside. The commer- cialization of the village economy robbed the villeins of their livelihood. Christopher M. Duncan discussed communalism as an element of the political philosophy of the opponents of the U.S. Constitution. Duncan argued that Antifederalist communalism in America’s revolutionary period is best understood as an institutional or constitutional projection designed to foster and protect a particular sort of individualism. Antifederalists were not hostile to republicanism. Their communalism represented an attempt to maintain a social and political context in which republican individuals, the citizens of the new state, could flourish. The rationale for their choice was based on the Antifederalists’ sense that strong communities were more likely to produce strong individuals and that strong individuals, in turn, were more likely to be successful in the “pursuit of happiness” that was fitting and appropriate for all human beings. It was taken for granted that those “happy” individuals would, in turn, attempt to preserve and extend such communities over time, out of a properly construed self-interest, through political institutions. In their concluding remarks Ulinka Rublack and Joel F. Harrington stressed that communities and the modern state in Germany as well as in America were not opponents. Both even seemed to share the same political

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 57 ideals of order and peace. The decline of the communities must not be exag- gerated: There not only were no dramatic shifts in their relationship to the state; in some respects they even seem to have become more active and more influential by means of cooperation with the territorial administration. In New England and also in Germany state government was not a bureaucratic institution but rather a process based on a pluralism of powers that was organized in terms of cooperation and communication. A real change was brought about by the revolutions that strengthened the state administrations in both America and Germany. In colonial American as well as in German communities social relationships were unstable. Factionalism and individualism always existed. However, villages in both countries exerted considerable pressure to conform. This pressure forced the communities to create a semblance of unity and equality. Further avenues of research were then outlined. The participation of rural towns in large-scale communica- tive and learning processes, such as the emergence of the modern media, will throw additional light on the cultural significance of communities. The role that denominational churches and popular confessionalization played in community building and communal politics must be investigated. The concept of community and communalism itself has to be put into historical context. Different ideas of community have to be distinguished from one another: The community as regarded from within; the community as conceived of from without by contemporary government organizations thinking in terms of commonwealth, patria, nation, or republic; and finally communalism and the community as interpretative models of historiography.

Johannes Dillinger

ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE PRESENT: PHOTOGRAPHS BY GERHARD FALLER-WALZER

Workshop at the GHI, March 14, 2001. Conveners: Cordula Grewe (GHI), Christine von Oertzen (Technical University of Berlin), Werner Ott (Goethe Institute/Inter Nationes, Washington, D.C.). Participants: Marion Deshmukh (George Mason University), Wendy Grossman (University of Maryland at College Park).

For the last several years the Goethe Institute/Inter Nationes in Washington, D.C., has fostered the growing cultural dialog between Washington and Berlin through a series of artist and scholar exchanges, exhibitions, and film series. This

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 58 Gerhard Faller-Walzer, Atelier A. Sachs. year a joint effort with the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, the Berlin Senate, the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the GHI resulted in an exchange of photographers whose work portrays the ongoing transformation of the two cities. The first exhibition of this project, mounted at the Goethe Institute and the GHI, presented a series of Berlin cityscapes and still lifes by Gerhard Faller-Walzer. Twelve years after the fateful evening of November 9, 1989, when East Berliners breached the infamous Berlin Wall to flow into West Berlin, Faller- Walzer’s somber photographs present a critical inventory of the rapid changes that his city, once again the capital of a united Germany, has undergone since the country’s unification in 1990. The tone of these enigmatic images is sub- dued, a distanced and yet passionate recording of the remains of historical events. Like an archaeologist, Faller-Walzer turns toward the unspectacular as his main focus—old tires and the bodies of dead mice, scrap metal and new billboards, a concrete base for a street light long vanished, or a sign directing the pedestrian toward the Reichstag restaurant that no longer exists. The photographs pursue their Erinnerungsarbeit (memory work) not only through their choice of subject matter or their iconography. Their power also

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 59 resides in their formal qualities, which visualize the immediate presence of objects that have now lost their context or function as enigmatic ciphers of an already bygone age. Their sepia-tone surfaces, varnished and partially bleached, and their range of gray, yellow, and brown colors evoke nineteenth-century photographs, fusing the expressiveness of an artist’s highly personal vision with a historical-historicist gesture. In this sense Faller-Walzer not only comments on the relation between memory and history, and the inevitable interde- pendence between documentation and interpretation, but also summons up an artistic heritage. The representation of memory thus converges with a self- conscious reflection on the history of photography as a medium that has carried much of the weight of this memory work in the twentieth century. This dual reflection on the transitory quality of history and on the medium itself has accompanied photography from its very beginnings, as Wendy Grossman stressed in her engaging talk on the history of photography. Faller-Walzer also directs his archaeological and historicist gaze toward Germany’s national monuments, such as the Reichstag building, and toward those corporate powers that he identifies as the motor of Berlin’s architectural transformation. His photographs provide a fresh, sometimes shocking, and always subversive view of these well-known monuments by using tilted angles or steep focal points, or, in the series Spiegelbilder, by photographing reflections in the convex mirrors that stand at blind street corners. The metaphor is a rich one, for the mirror is looking both back- ward and forward, and in both cases the view is distorted. Whereas the wrapping of the Reichstag by Christo and Jeanne-Claude became a symbol of the hope for healing and a desire for a democratic future no longer overshadowed by the burden of the past, Faller-Walzer’s work reflects the other, more contemplative side of the Janus-headed reality of a recently unified Germany. Attempting to understand the archaeological layers of history and memory, his work echoes the sensibility of Günter Kunert’s poem “Postwar Berlin”: In backyards iron wheels Revolved floor By floor Until they all burnt out In the fire standstill and stillness caved in Together with the empty shells Dead proletarians whirled up With the unfettered wind And drifted down once more As a gray layer Over the city remains.

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GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 61 Gerhard Faller-Walzer, untitled.

Gerhard Faller-Walzer, Straßenspiegel Pirna.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 62 Reviewing the history of Germany since the fall of the Wall, Marion Deshmukh pointed out that Faller-Walzer’s introspective examination of Berlin’s past and present recalls the “juxtaposition of hope and despair” that gripped many German artists in 1945. At that time an art critic asked: “Is there any decomposition more surrealistic than the pictures of the devastated cities?” And Winston Churchill once remarked that “First we shape buildings, then they shape us.” Beyond this observation, the further question that Berlin’s history of construction, destruction, and reconstruction poses is how long we continue to be shaped by that which has vanished or been absorbed by subsequent structures. Artists such as Faller-Walzer are chronicling the disappear- ance of a world quickly overtaken by the new cultural politics of urban reconstruction, even as they contribute to the persistent power of the invisible. The exhibition of Faller-Walzer’s photographs at the GHI will run for the next two years. Contact the Institute for information on the artist and his works.

Cordula Grewe

PRUSSIA—YESTERDAY AND TOMORROW

Symposium at the GHI, March 27, 2001. Conveners: Dieter Dettke (Friedrich Ebert Foundation), Christof Mauch (GHI). Speakers: Manfred Stolpe (minister president of Brandenburg), David E. Barclay (Kalamazoo College). Moderator: Robert Gerald Livingston (GHI).

The year 2001 marks the three-hundredth anniversary of the Kingdom of Prussia. When, on January 17, 1701, Frederick William III, elector of Branden- burg, had himself crowned king in Königsberg, the state was insignificant. Over the next 170 years Prussia struggled under talented monarchs like Frederick the Great (1712–86) to establish its supremacy in Germany, an effort brought to a successful conclusion when the Prussian King Wilhelm I was proclaimed German emperor on the same day in 1871. The “Prussian Year” has been only modestly commemorated in Germany, even in Prussia’s core territory, the states of Brandenburg and Berlin, as Manfred Stolpe observed. In the United States, David E. Barclay added, the once negative image of Prussia among Americans has now given way, but to—nothing. Even among historians in this country the prevailing reaction to this long- extinguished state, once so splendid, is indifference. The GHI’s symposium may not have revived general interest in the splendor of Prussia but it did engender a lively discussion, initiated by the two speakers, on Prussia’s record and in particular on Prussia’s famous virtues, primary and secondary.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 63 Even today, Stolpe noted, Prussia can serve to polarize in Germany, although far less intensely than was once the case. Too seldom considered are its contributions: rejection of religious discrimination on its territory, its orientation toward the Western centers of Holland and England, its modern immigration and settlement policy, and Frederick the Great’s support for American independence in the early 1780s. The once great fear of Prussia has vanished, Stolpe continued. This is true even in Poland, Barclay added. Any fear of a successor to Prussia in contemporary Germany is groundless, Stolpe argued, for German federalism is much more balanced than it was before Prussia disappeared from the map. Even at the height of its power, Barclay thought, Prussia was more complicated, more subject to contradictions, its history characterized by more discontinuities than has commonly been supposed. It is even difficult to say what was typically Prussian: The dynasty, the bureaucracy, the military? None of them, in Barclay’s view. Rather, typically Prussian was its ability to renew itself after defeat. The commentator ventured the view that this may have been a lesson that the Federal Republic, for all the anti-Prus- sian sentiments of its Rhenish and Bavarian leadership, took subconsciously to heart as it rebuilt West Germany after World War II. In the United States the image of Prussia, positive in the eighteenth and on into the nineteenth century, turned negative after the establishment of the German Reich in 1871. Along with Winston Churchill, who thought Prussia “the root of all evil,” the United States came to subscribe to the Allied war aim of dissolv- ing Prussia, which was then accomplished by Allied Control Council Law 46 in 1947—a move that the historian Golo Mann called “a kick which the victorious asses delivered to a long dead lion.” The discussion following the presentations by Stolpe and Barclay centered on two questions. First, when did Prussia expire? Was it with the administrative fiat of the Control Council? Perhaps it was with the establishment of the Reich in 1871, which Wilhelm I called “the saddest day of my life, for we are burying the Prussian kingdom.” Perhaps it was the Na- zis’ takeover of Prussia in 1933 and Hitler’s attempt to portray himself as the natural successor to Frederick the Great, Otto von Bismarck, and the Prussian Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg. The second issue, more in- tensively debated, concerned the so-called Prussian virtues. Did those of- ficers and officials who felt themselves working in the Prussian tradition far too easily allow the “secondary” virtues of achievement, sense of duty, and self-discipline to be perverted by the Nazis for their own purposes, which were antithetical to that tradition? And what happened to those “primary” virtues of decency, honor, tolerance, and a sense of responsibility during the years of Nazi barbarism? Stolpe insisted on the present validity of at least one legacy of Prussia, the insistence that “there is no honor and

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 64 no merit [in an achievement] if it does not include a benefit for the country and the people.” But Prussia too, he went on to say, makes one consider that values can degenerate into extremes—Prussian sobriety into emotional coldness or practical reason into the cynicism of power, or patriotism into fanaticism. Seen from that vantage point Prussia represents true tragedy, victimized by its own virtues. In his concluding observations Barclay identified such “tragic dimensions” of Prussian history as giving it significance beyond Germany for people everywhere.

Robert Gerald Livingston

EUROPE IN CROSS-NATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Conference at the University of Cincinnati, April 6–7, 2001. Co-sponsored by the Taft Fund of the University of Cincinnati. Conveners: Deborah Cohen (American University), Vera Lind (GHI), Christof Mauch (GHI), Maura O’Connor (University of Cincinnati). Participants: Peter Baldwin (UCLA), Susan R. Grayzel (University of Mississippi), Nancy L. Green (Ecole des Hautes Etudés en Sciences Sociales), Michael Miller (Syracuse University), Maria Paschalidi (University College London), Marta Petrusewicz (Hunter College, CUNY), Glenda Sluga (University of Sydney).

On the first weekend in April the University of Cincinnati hosted a conference to explore themes of, practices in, and approaches to cross-national and comparative studies in European history during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The goal was to bring together a group of scholars who work across national and disciplinary boundaries using these kinds of approaches. The conference participants were asked to deliver papers in which they discussed the advantages of as well as the obstacles to using comparative and cross-national approaches and methods in their own research. Papers were circulated before the conference, permitting a generous allotment of time for discussion. In the first session Marta Petrusewicz presented a case study of the comparative history of three countries, where she found remarkable similarities in their quest for modernization: Ireland, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and the Kingdom of Poland between 1820 and 1870. She reflected on the experience of “doing” comparative research but also addressed the question of “what, why, and how do we compare?” She observed that most

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 65 historians have followed the first commandment of comparative history: “Do not compare but the comparable,” which is a problem because it con- structs comparability. In the past the reasons for doing comparative history could be as diverse as seeing it as a first step toward universal history or using it as an heuristic instrument to evaluate concepts. Petrusewicz pointed out that European comparisons were dominant until recently, when inter- cultural comparisons appeared on the research agenda. In the same session Maria Paschalidi introduced her study on the development of cross-cultural accounts of relations between metropolis and colony using the example of Britain and the Ionian Islands between 1815 and 1864. Identifying race, ethnicity, class, and gender as powerful agents in constructing differences between peoples, Paschalidi investigated how the British understanding of Ionian character contributed to complex negotiations over the form of its colonial rule and how this determined the island’s place in the British Empire. She concluded that the British used common-sense assumptions of Ionian character that represented them as “childish” and “oriental” to establish difference, which then served to reas- sure the British of their superiority. In session two Peter Baldwin made an argument for why all history is comparative. Comparison is inevitably part of any historical research, even national history, because “the assertion of singularity is, obviously and trivi- ally, posing a comparative question.” Baldwin found that the best comparative histories are those that try to argue about differences and similarities in a range of cases without any ambitions to generalize. This method allows us to better understand a more general issue. In this way the importance of comparative history is that it points toward causal explanations “to isolate the important from the incidental,” as Baldwin put it. He be- lieves that history has been drifting away from this in recent decades due to the linguistic turn in cultural history, which is more concerned with complexity than causation. In the second paper in this session Michael Miller pointed out the differences between cross-national history and comparative history—two approaches with different objectives and benefits. By comparing similar phenomena and testing theories comparative history emphasizes causality, whereas cross-national history pursues a “historical story across several national experiences,” like a multinational national history that can have comparative dimensions even if it need not be a defining feature. Miller then went on to discuss the two approaches while working on the history of the maritime world of five European countries in the twentieth century. He concluded that one needs a deep knowledge of several areas and languages in order to really do comparative history, and by doing so, what is gained in scope is lost in depth. According to Miller, comparative history

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 66 asks good questions but is an unrealistic pursuit. By contrast, cross-national history—tracing one story across several national experiences—seems to be a much more workable concept. Susan Grayzel presented the third paper in the session, in which she reflected on her experiences with the concept of comparative history in the study of gender, women, and war. She pointed out that until recently, studies of war examined broad patterns over national borders but stayed uncon- nected to their social, political, and cultural contexts. Grayzel described the difficulties in writing a history of war in all its complexities, including the experiences of both men and women at war. But she maintained that “insert- ing gender into the transnational and comparative history of modern Eu- rope and even global warfare is not only well worth doing but vital.” In session three Nancy L. Green delivered a concise account of the difficulties and possible pitfalls of comparative history based on her own comparative research on immigrant garment workers in Paris and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. She reflected on the difficulty of defining the very expression “comparative history,” the different types of comparisons, and the special challenge of constructed comparisons that compare one or more nations. Green pointed out the danger of flattening research results when the task involves treating each nation and each period in all of its complexity while maintaining pertinent categories for comparative purposes. She concluded her paper with an examination of the specific difficulties a comparative approach poses to the research and writing process. Glenda Sluga closed the conference with a paper on the distinctiveness of eastern and western European nations that relied on comparisons of their respective theories of national identity, the relative functionality of their nationhood, and their varying proclivity to nationalism. She pointed out how the historical sense of western Europe is accentuated by the differentiation from eastern Europe and that the potential of comparative history in this respect lies in its ability to expose the “contrived nature of the assumptions underlying conventional comparisons.” All in all, the papers worked well together because they showed a whole range of approaches toward comparative history based on the experience of their authors and because they were able to pinpoint what had worked for a specific topic and what had not. Speakers and audience engaged in a lively, sometimes controversial debate on these challenging methodological problems because these are the problems most historians must confront, regardless of their time period and topic. A conference volume on comparative history is planned.

Vera Lind

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 67 POSTWAR GERMAN GENERATIONS AND THE LEGITIMACY OF THE REPUBLIC

Workshop at the GHI, April 10, 2001. Convener: Vera Lind (GHI). Participants: Dirk Moses (University of Sydney, Australia), Raimund Lammersdorf (GHI).

Since the controversy earlier this year surrounding German Foreign Minis- ter Joschka Fischer’s involvement in the battles of the ‘68 generation, Ger- mans have been debating the legacy of this generation with respect to the evolution of postwar democracy. The Generationsfrage seems once again to be at the center of the debate, which runs along well-known lines established during the Cold War. The workshop picked up on this recent intellectual and political debate in Germany (which has also received significant media coverage) and discussed new approaches in terms of how to evaluate the development of West German democracy in light of recent research. In his presentation, titled “The Forty-Fivers: The Languages of Repub- licanism and the Foundation of West Germany,” Dirk Moses described the intellectual dilemma of a new democracy in a post-totalitarian and post- genocidal society: “On the one hand, such societies must distance themselves in all respects from the evil regime that they replaced in order to establish their moral credibility. On the other, if the new republic is to be a stable entity, they must usually integrate a substantial number of those persons who were implicated in the crimes of that regime.” In what he called the “redemptive” language of republicanism, the new foundation entails a cathartic break with an evil past. In the “integrationist” model of republicanism, establishing democratic institutions can suffice, and the consensus is that continuities from a previous regime slowly integrate into the new order. In Germany many factors prevented a redemptive foundation; in the 1950s the German Left regarded the new institutions with suspicion because they did not represent a radical new beginning and because they allowed the old elite to lead Germany into the future. Moses rejected the view that the challenge of the 1968 student rebellion successfully “refounded” the Federal Republic. Instead, the rebellion forced a new dialog on the legitimacy and nature of the republic. “As long as leftist Germans highlighted the Nazi past in order to point out the inadequacy of the new order,” Moses noted, “liberals and responsible conservatives would refuse to permit this past to discredit it, because they were committed to the new state’s foundation.” Moses maintained that neither side succeeded but that

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 68 a West German republican consensus developed out of this bitter public debate, which made the German democracy a “discursive, not an integrationist or redemptive achievement.” Moses then focused on the generational dynamics of these redemptive and integrative models, and shifted the emphasis away from the “founder” generation and the students in 1968 to the “forty-fivers,” as he calls them— a group that was shaped by the collapse of the Nazi regime and included famous intellectual figures such as Jürgen Habermas and Ralf Dahrendorf. This group shared an “experiential matrix” of war, ideology, and breakdown that released a “moral energy” and a mission to prevent this from ever happening again. Moses criticized the way in which the forty-fivers are usually condemned in the historical literature as an apolitical generation that did not join or politically adumbrate the sixty-eighters. For him it is precisely that quality that makes them the key generation: They were “uniquely placed to commence the process of discursive republican value development,” and because they needed time to reorient themselves, they did not conduct the generational rebellion redemptive republicans wanted them to. This generation, while acknowledging the criminality of the Nazi regime but not personal responsibility for it, searched for political and personal conversion, and the new state became their emotional and intellectual home. According to Moses, this meant that the dilemma of legitimacy was projected into the public sphere, where a discourse on “the content of the republic in relation to the Nazi past” was constantly reflected, thus hin- dering the rebellion imminent in the redemptive model as well as the moral blindness of the integrative model. According to Moses, the forty-fivers gradually “refounded discursively” the Federal Republic and commenced “framing the questions of the present and direction of the future in terms of the meaning of the past.” From this a consensus formed that viewed the West German Federal Republic as a “liberal and democratic state” in which neither the redemptive nor the integrationist model of republicanism could impose itself. In his comment Raimund Lammersdorf stressed that Moses’s multidi- mensional approach goes far beyond the redemptive and integrative model in its explanatory power. In addition to explaining the coexistence of authoritarian and liberal continuities in the development of West German democracy, Lammersdorf pointed out that Moses’s generational approach, his rejection of the myth of the silent forty-fivers, and his innovative concept of the discursive development of German democracy could be strengthened by placing the fairly isolated intellectual critique within the larger context of a vibrant oppositional culture that included youth riots, union struggles for workers’ rights, and a highly critical press. This would be even more important in the light of oral history research from social histo-

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 69 rians that has demonstrated that “neither the end of the war nor the founding of the Federal Republic” remained important in the collective memory. Two other events were more critical: Stalingrad and the 1948 currency reform. This suggests that most Germans were too involved in their own struggles for survival to think about the suffering of others. Lammersdorf also added that although it is legitimate and important to concentrate on a specific group when describing the public debate on Germany’s democratic development, as Moses does, it needs to be seen in the larger context of the democratization process by the daily (“learning by doing”) practice of republican government. In light of Moses’s generational approach Lammersdorf stressed the importance of 1950s demographics in order to get a better idea of the relationships between the generations at the time. Looking at the numbers of different age groups, the extreme losses of the generation born between 1915 and 1921 become visible, but it also turns out that the forty-fivers had suffered severely. In contrast, the numbers of the even older generation, who were between ages 30 and 45 at the time, are very robust (as is the number of sixty-eighters), and this is the generation upon whom the responsibility fell at the end of the war. Lammersdorf continued that many dimensions of this generation’s shared experiences, for example war trauma, and their impact on the development of German society and democracy have yet to be explored. Furthermore, whereas Moses demonstrated that contradictions and the constant crisis of legitimacy were an integral part of the republican consensus, Lammersdorf raised the question of how to explain the obvious end of the crisis of legitimacy. Moses suggested a discursive development, whereas Lammersdorf emphasized the possibility of conversion experiences within the integrationist policy and the fact that the Nazified elite gradually disappeared into retirement as a younger generation took over. Consequently, “the crisis of legitimacy slowly dissipated with each replacement” so that, ironically, the success of the sixty-eighters might have had something to do with the fact that the situation was changing anyway. In short, Lammersdorf stressed how Moses’s paper forces us to rethink a number of established interpretations and that he regards Moses´s work as a part of a larger trend in the intellectual history of West Ger- many, from which we can expect many exciting and important debates to come.

Vera Lind

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 70 PHILANTHROPY, PATRONAGE, AND URBAN POLITICS: TRANSATLANTIC TRANSFERS BETWEEN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA IN THE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES

Conference at the University of Toronto, May 3–5, 2001. Conveners: Thomas Adam (University of Toronto), Eckhardt Fuchs (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science), James Retallack (University of Toronto). Participants: Maria Baader (University of Toronto), Karsten Borgmann (Free University of Berlin), Tobias Brinkmann (University of Leipzig), Andreas W. Daum (GHI), Jon Dellandrea (University of Toronto), Brett Fairbairn (University of Saskatchewan), David C. Hammack (Case Western Reserve University), Dieter Hoffmann (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science), John Ingham (University of Toronto), Jennifer Jenkins (Washington University), Roger Keil (York University), Simone Lässig (Technical University of Dresden), Gabriele Lingelbach (University of Trier), Margaret Menninger (Southwest Texas State University), Susannah Morris (London School of Economics), Marline Otte (Tulane University), H. Glenn Penny (University of Missouri), Derek Penslar (University of Toronto), Daniel Porsch (University of Tübingen), Jean Quataert (SUNY Binghamton), Mark A. Russel (Toronto), Oliver Schmidt (Bertelsmann Foundation).

In early May 2001 eighteen scholars met in Toronto for the first international conference on philanthropy in a comparative context. Conveners Tho- mas Adam, Eckhardt Fuchs, and James Retallack brought together historians and social scientists from Canada, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. This mixture and the decision to gather the papers in a conference reader, which was distributed to all participants prior to the conference, enabled the participants to discuss in-depth several aspects of the phenomenon “philanthropy.” Research on philanthropy in Europe and North America is still in the early stages. Whereas American social scientists have produced a wide range of books on this topic, the limits of their findings are immediately obvious. Most of these writings focus on American philanthropy after 1930 and ne- glect the origins of these ideas. In other words, the emergence and development of philanthropy in the eighteenth and nineteenth century is not discussed. Moreover, American scholars have failed to develop a theoretical concept of philanthropy. In addition, research on German philanthropy has only begun in the last ten years. The impetus for this research stems not

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 71 from historical interest but from a change in German political culture. Al- though the topic of Bürgertum has been fashionable among German historians for over twenty years, these historians have neglected or excluded one of the most important bourgeois behavioral patterns from their research, namely, philanthropy. This exclusion results from certain assumptions about German historical development and society. Because many historians assumed that Germany experienced a Sonderweg (special path toward modernity), creating a distinct bourgeoisie that lacked political emancipation, no one thought to search for elements of a civil society—by definition a non-German version of modern society. It was assumed that the German bourgeoisie did not develop feelings of responsibility for German society. Rather, historians have expected that the state took responsibility for financing social and cultural public institutions. Therefore, philanthropy has been widely seen as an Ameri- can invention and as a distinct American approach to modern life. This interpretation was subjected to much criticism during the conference. Several papers presented a picture of a German bourgeoisie that took responsibility for German society and engaged in a broad variety of social, cultural, and scientific philanthropies, just as their American counterparts did. Margaret Menninger used the example of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra to show how this institution was founded and supported by Leipzig’s upper class. Not only did she analyze the social composition of the financiers of this particular orchestra, she also looked at the political connections of the orchestra board within the city. Whereas financial back- ing came mostly from the commercial bourgeoisie, civil servants and liberal professionals were also important. H. Glenn Penny focused on ethno- graphic museums in Wilhelmine Germany, arguing that these institutions garnered considerable support from private patrons from all over the world. Eckhardt Fuchs and Dieter Hoffmann argued that German industrialists— contrary to traditional interpretation—promoted and funded scientific projects. Werner von Siemens, for example, donated more than half a million Reichsmarks to the new Imperial Institute of Physics and Technology. Philanthropy for science therefore was not exclusively an American phenomenon—it also had a long tradition in Germany. Jennifer Jenkins used the case study of Hamburg’s People’s Home to investigate the philanthropic engagement of Hamburg’s upper class. The founders of Hamburg’s People’s Home were convinced that moral improvement was the precondition for social improvement. Subsequently, the provision of enlightenment through instruction in the fine arts was the main venue of philanthropic activity. Further, Jenkins’s paper introduced the second main topic of the conference, namely, the transatlantic transfer of philanthropic blueprints and models. Following Daniel Rodger’s approach, Jenkins argued that the People’s Home in Hamburg developed in a transatlantic culture of

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 72 social reform. The People’s Home drew inspiration and practical instruction from examples in Berlin and Dresden as well as examples in Great Britain and the United States. Toynbee Hall in East London and Jane Addams’s Hull House in Chicago were models for Hamburg’s social reformers. Thomas Adam took this argument further by investigating the travels of American and Canadian philanthropists to Great Britain and Germany in order to find models for museums, art galleries, and social housing projects. Thus, philanthropy was not an American invention but a European one. By comparing social housing projects in Boston, Leipzig, London, and New York, Adam demonstrated the interconnections among philanthropists from these different countries and how American philanthropists implemented European models in U.S. cities. Adam concluded that there were few differences between German and American societies in the second half of the nineteenth century—both depended heavily on private support for social and cultural public institutions. Karsten Borgmann contradicted this view with his investigation of art museums in Germany and the United States after the turn of the century. Focusing on Berlin he argued that there were fundamental differences between museum philanthropy in the United States and in Germany. Whereas American museums were privately owned, German museums were state institutions that received additional financial support from museum asso- ciations. Following the Johns Hopkins study of civil society in a number of countries, Borgmann seemed to offer a new version of the Sonderweg thesis. Tobias Brinkmann compared nineteenth-century Jewish philanthropy in the United States with Jewish philanthropy in Germany. By showing the similarities between both countries Brinkmann demonstrated that the same phenomenon ended with different results. Whereas Jewish philanthropy in Germany became a stumbling block on the way to full-fledged integration, American Jews successfully employed philanthropy to further integration. David Hammack’s paper examined philanthropy and nonprofit organizations in a variety of American cities over the last two hundred years. Most surprising, at least for Germans, was Hammack’s finding that American nonprofit organizations have always been regulated, controlled, and subsidized by government. Local, state, and federal governments in the United States have shaped, limited, regulated, and funded nonprofit organizations in key ways throughout the course of American history. The most dramatic aspect of this conference was the realization that a multitude of understandings of philanthropy were being presented. The question then quickly arose: What is philanthropy? Every paper was based on a different understanding of philanthropy—a situation that reflects the state of research on the topic. One main objective of the conveners therefore was to discuss the nature of philanthropy. Susannah Morris, Thomas

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 73 Adam, and Simone Lässig introduced different theoretical concepts into the discussion. Morris rejected the existing economic and sociological concepts of philanthropy because they are ahistorical. For example, the Johns Hopkins definition is unable to cope with the institutional diversity of earlier periods. Economic approaches argue that philanthropy results from market or state failures. But we cannot speak of a state failure for a period in which the state did not assume responsibility for social and cultural institutions. Frank Prochaska’s definition of philanthropy—simple kindness toward others—is too broad. Adam and Lässig argued that philanthropy is always connected to integration into social structures. Adam suggested linking philanthropic engagement to the construction of class. The end result was that all participants tried to find a common understanding of philanthropy. The participants discovered that many of their assumptions about the historical development of Germany and America were not valid. Germany’s history no longer seemed all that different from or more special than America’s. Several papers suggested that there existed an intensive exchange of ideas between philanthropists and social reformers in Germany and the United States. This should not be a surprise because American and German cities experienced the same social problems caused by industrialization at the end of the nineteenth century. Despite this fact, comparative history and the history of the exchange of cultural practices and models have not been the topic of historical research. History is still organized along national lines. The conference showed that this differentiation does not reflect a historical reality. Nineteenth-century philanthropists thought in terms of a transatlantic community; perhaps it is time that we should follow their lead.

Thomas Adam

CRIME AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN MODERN GERMANY, 1870–1960

Workshop at the GHI, May 11–12, 2001. Convener: Richard F. Wetzell (GHI). Participants: Jennifer Evans (University of Victoria), Gabriel Finder (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum), Andreas Fleiter (University of Bochum), Sabine Freitag (GHI London), Petra Gödecke (University of Bielefeld), Todd Herzog (University of Cincinnati), Benjamin Hett (Harvard University), Thomas Kailer (University of Frankfurt), Sandra Leukel (University of Bielefeld), Warren Rosenblum (Webster University), Nikolaus Wachsmann (Cambridge University), Robert Waite (Office of Special Investigations, U.S. Department of Justice).

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 74 This workshop brought together scholars from Germany, England, Canada, and the United States who are currently engaged in research on the history of crime and criminal justice in Germany from the Imperial period through the 1960s. The first panel dealt with various aspects of criminal justice and penal reform in Imperial Germany. All three of the panels’ papers examined how contemporary criticisms of the criminal justice system reflected broader anxieties—about the changing role of women, the boundaries of class, and the role of public opinion in court—and a growing sense of ambivalence about the liberal achievements in the realm of criminal justice. Benjamin Hett’s paper discussed several controversial court cases that attracted public attention in Wilhelmine Germany and the “literature of judicial error” to which such cases gave rise. In the eyes of the mostly liberal Berlin lawyers and journalists that produced this body of critical work, the major problem with Imperial Germany’s justice system was not that the courts were too lenient or too severe, or that they were politically biased, but that the outcomes of trials were often random. Their analysis of the causes and possible remedies for this randomness reflected a fundamental ambivalence, even unhappiness, about some of the most distinctly liberal features of the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1879, such as the principle of oral trials, trial by jury for certain offenses, and the criminal defendant’s right to call witnesses, all of which these liberal lawyers and journalists criticized as root causes of the randomness of judicial verdicts. Turning from the courtrooms to the prisons, Sandra Leukel analyzed how the growing unease of middle-class men over the changing social role of women was reflected in the discourse of reform-minded prison administrators (Strafanstaltsbeamte) regarding the criminality of women and their proper treatment in prison. In their discussions of the causes of female criminality prison officials almost invariably portrayed female offenders primarily as victims. Although their reform suggestions (such as separate prisons for women, with female personnel) repeated long- standing demands of the nineteenth-century prison reform movement, Leukel stressed that their justification of these demands, which referred to an “essential difference” between men and women, was new and reflected a novel strategy for containing the changes in women’s roles that were under way in German society. The panel’s third paper, by Andreas Fleiter, examined socialist approaches to crime and criminal justice from Karl Marx to the Social Demo- cratic Party (SPD) in Imperial Germany. To be sure, the SPD complained about Klassenjustiz (class justice) and stressed the social causes of crime in a capitalist society. But, as Fleiter demonstrated, the socialists also shared remarkable affinities with the mainstream (nonsocialist) penal reform movement. Like the “modern school of criminal law,” the socialists thought that

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 75 the interests of society should take priority over those of the individual. What is more, they drew on biomedical explanations of crime to strengthen the boundary between the “respectable” working class and the Lumpen- proletariat (urban underclass) by branding the latter as biologically inferior. As a result, the SPD’s attitude toward penal reform during the Kaiserreich was paradoxical. On the one hand, the party took “orthodox liberal” positions, such as defending the rights of prisoners and seeking to minimize prison sentences. On the other hand, with regard to the socialist future, the SPD endorsed the notion of “social defense” as the purpose of punishment and the idea that many criminals were genetically defective. The second panel examined scientific, medical, and literary discourses on crime, criminals, and criminal justice in the Wilhelmine and Weimar periods. Thomas Kailer presented his research project on “knowledge about the criminal” (Das Wissen vom Verbrecher ) as part of a cooperative research program on “Biologism versus Sociologism: Social Reforms Under the Influ- ence of the Natural Sciences.” His discussion focused on the mutually stimulating interaction of scientific theory production and society’s interest in explanations of—and solutions to—specific social problems. Drawing on Ludwik Fleck’s concept of “styles of thought” (Denkstile ), Kailer argued that contemporaries evaluated the available knowledge of the criminal and explanations of crime according to their usefulness in solving a particular problem that the prevailing “style of thought” had placed at the center of penal policy: the problem of recidivism. Gabriel Finder’s paper examined the tension between “law” and “discipline” (Foucault) inherent in the gradual medicalization of juvenile justice in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany. On the one hand, juvenile delinquency was transformed from a moral into a medical condition, and the juvenile courts’ abridgment of normal judicial procedures and their focus on the offender (rather than the offense) made these courts unusually hospitable for forensic psychiatric experts. Thus forensic psychiatry gradually became en- trenched in the juvenile courts of several major cities, where, for a while at least, every juvenile defendant underwent a psychiatric examination. On the other hand, however, forensic psychiatry also met with considerable resistance, especially from hostile jurists, who ensured that the vast majority of juvenile courts restricted psychiatric examinations to defendants whose mental competence was seriously in doubt. Finder therefore concluded that the impact of forensic psychiatry on juvenile justice was limited by the “tenacity of old rule-of-law habits”; discipline remained framed by law. Turning to literary and journalistic depictions of crime, Todd Herzog analyzed a multivolume series of criminal case studies published under the title Außenseiter der Gesellschaft—die Verbrechen der Gegenwart in the mid-1920s. At a time when scientific explanations of crime were gaining increasing influence,

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 76 Herzog argued, these case histories deployed multiperspectival narratives to demonstrate the “impossibility of clearly locating causality and guilt.” Whereas earlier criminal case studies had used the case narrative as a means of distinguishing the criminal from the noncriminal, these modernist criminal case studies clearly located the criminal in society rather than outside of it. What is more, like the “literature of judical error” discussed by Hett, they subjected the scientific and legal “knowledge system” itself to analysis and criticism. In sum, the papers of the second panel showed that Foucault’s picture of the colonization of law by a medicalized version of “discipline” has been overdrawn. The claim of criminology and psychiatry that the crime problem must be approached (and solved) as a scientific and largely medical one met with significant resistance both from jurists who sought to insulate long-standing judicial procedures against the incursions of psychiatric experts and from writers and journalists who subjected this claim to searching criticism in their analyses of actual cases. This theme also figured prominently in the third panel, which was devoted to various aspects of crime and criminal justice in the Weimar and Nazi Years. Warren Rosenblum discussed the development of Gerichtshilfe (court assistance), a new service in which welfare workers or volunteers assisted the courts by gathering background information on criminal defendants that was compiled into a “social diagnosis” that could be used for sentencing and pardoning decisions. The development of Gerichtshilfe, he argued, must be understood in terms of a three-way interaction among the courts, state welfare officials, and private charitable organizations. Starting in the early Weimar years, three different models of Gerichtshilfe developed: Under the Bielefeld system, Gerichtshilfe was loosely coordinated by the courts; in the Halle model, it was administered by the local prison society; and in the Berlin model, it was run by city welfare officials. As the expansion of Gerichts- hilfe accelerated in the mid-1920s, conservative judges became worried that Gerichtshilfe was coming to serve the interest of the accused rather than the courts. Unable to stop the new institutions’ momentum, the Prussian Judges Association decided to co-opt Gerichtshilfe by demanding that it be run by the courts rather than state welfare officials. Remarkably, Rosenblum showed that in this struggle over the control of Gerichtshilfe Christian welfare organizations chose to support the judiciary against their colleagues in the state welfare offices, because judges and Christian welfare leaders shared a common conservative fear of Weimar state and city government. Similar tensions between reform and repression played a central role in Nikolaus Wachsmann’s paper on prisons in Weimar Germany. As in the case of Gerichtshilfe, Weimar prisons witnessed significant reform efforts. Led by the Study Group for Prison Reform, Weimar prison reformers sought to strengthen the rehabilitative purpose of prison terms by such measures

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 77 as increasing prisoner autonomy, hiring social workers, and introducing a three-stage “progressive system” of punishment. Yet this reformist picture must be qualified in two ways. First, rank-and-file staff as well as many wardens often resisted or sabotaged such changes, seeking to preserve the tradition of strict military discipline in German prisons. Second, most Ger- man judicial and prison officials were agreed on the need for drastic measures, namely, “indefinite security confinement” (Sicherungsverwahrung), to be imposed on so-called “incorrigible” offenders. Although this measure did not become law during the Weimar period, many prisons implemented internal reviews by which some prisoners were classified as incorrigible, a verdict that could negatively affect their treatment in prison by excluding them from rehabilitation programs. Thus, Wachsmann stressed that although one can definitely observe a backlash against rehabilitative reform efforts in the years 1930–3, the repressive side of the prison and penal policy was very much present throughout the 1920s. In summary, the papers by Finder, Rosenblum, and Wachsmann demonstrated that the Weimar period witnessed significant reform efforts—in the areas of forensic psychiatry, Gerichtshilfe, and rehabilitative programs—but that these efforts also met with resistance from different quarters: from conservative retributivists who wanted to make sure that punishments were harsh enough, but also (as Finder suggests) from liberal-minded jurists who were concerned that the introduction of medicalized and welfarist approaches into criminal justice was undermining the procedural safeguards of the classic legal process that were crucial to civil liberty. But this was not just a struggle between reformers and opponents of reform. Oftentimes, it was the meaning and emphasis of reform that were at issue—as judges and welfare officials argued over who should control Gerichtshilfe, and as prison officials differed over the merits and content of “indefinite security confinement” for incorrigibles. Robert Waite and Jennifer Evans examined juvenile delinquency in the Nazi and postwar periods, respectively. Waite focused on the noticeable rise in teenage violent and serious crime after 1936 and the Ordinance for Protection Against Juvenile Serious Offenders ( jugendliche Schwerverbrecher ) of October 1939. Designed to roll back the provisions of the Juvenile Justice Law of 1923, which had emphasized the rehabilitation of juveniles through correctional education, the 1939 ordinance made it possible to try juveniles between ages sixteen and eighteen as adults—and to subject them to adult punishments, including the death penalty—if they possessed the maturity of an adult and if “in light of the criminal act or an especially reprehensible criminal character the protection of the Volk demands such penalties.” Al- though the courts could submit juveniles to psychiatric evaluations, criminal–biological examinations, or Gerichtshilfe investigations, in practice many courts made little effort to determine the defendant’s actual level of matu-

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 78 rity. As serious teenage crime persisted, the 1943 Reich Juvenile Court Law dropped the adult maturity requirement. Now any juvenile offender could be tried as an adult if an assessment of his or her “total personality” showed them to be a “serious offender.” The central role that an assessment of the offender’s “personality” played in making Nazi justice ever more draco- nian and murderous shows that the penal reform movement’s long-standing demand to base punishments on the offender’s personality rather than on the offense harbored serious dangers for individual freedom. Moving on to the postwar period, Evans examined the development of East German juvenile justice and youth welfare in Berlin–Brandenburg from 1945 to 1955. Finding that judges were sending most juvenile offenders to the local jails, which were becoming terribly overcrowded, in 1947 the East Ber- lin Central Youth Bureau began a concerted effort to open more alternative facilities for juvenile delinquents, including group homes and workhouses. Designed for the most difficult cases, these workhouses enforced gender- specific labor practices: industrial labor for boys and domestic chores for girls. As social policy became part of the Cold War conflict, East German authorities sought to ensure that reformatories and workhouses would not just re- habilitate juveniles but also create “socialist citizens” through ideological training. In practice, however, East German youth policy was dominated by the same fear of teenage sexual freedom and the same idealized vision of the family that guided youth policy in the West. The workshop concluded with a paper by Petra Gödecke, in which she traced the continuation of penal reform debates among West German criminal law professors in the 1950s. Their debates, she argued, were dominated by two paradigms. Only a small minority of professors supported the paradigm of Spezialprävention (the individualization of punishment) and Resozialisierung (rehabilitation) that had been the guiding notion of the Ger- man penal reform movement from its inception under the leadership of Franz von Liszt in the 1880s. By contrast, the vast majority of criminal law professors defended the paradigm of retributive justice, which held that punishments must serve the purpose of retribution rather than the protection of society through individualized penal sanctions. It is one of the great ironies of this story that a number of retributivist law professors who had been closely involved with the Nazi regime now argued that the Nazi experience had shown that Liszt’s reformist paradigm of individualizing punishments to better protect society necessarily led to a totalitarian system of criminal justice and therefore had to be rejected. The workshop was marked by a lively exchange of ideas. The publication in book form of much of the research that was presented is eagerly awaited.

Richard F. Wetzell

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 79 THE SPIRIT OF AN AGE: NINETEENTH-CENTURY PAINTINGS FROM THE NATIONALGALERIE, BERLIN

Symposium at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., June 9, 2001. Conveners: Philip Conisbee (National Gallery), Cordula Grewe (GHI). Participants: Françoise Forster-Hahn (University of California at Riverside), Michael Fried (Johns Hopkins University), and Peter-Klaus Schuster (Nationalgalerie, Berlin).

This symposium accompanied the exhibition “The Spirit of an Age” at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., which presented masterpieces from the collection of nineteenth-century German and French paintings housed in Berlin’s Alte Nationalgalerie. Made possible by the temporary closure of the Nationalgalerie for major renovation, the exhibition was an outstanding opportunity to study a corpus of paintings rarely present in North American collections. Beyond its art-historical value and aesthetic pleasure, the exhibition also marks a historical moment. One hundred twenty-five years after the Na- tionalgalerie first opened and fifty-six years after the division of Germany into East and West dispersed the museum’s holdings, the collection will be reunited and returned to its freshly renovated home on Berlin’s Museum Island in December of 2001. The reopening of the museum thus carries political and symbolic meaning, representing the “New Germany” after the unification in 1990. Thus, Berlin’s Nationalgalerie will continue to play the highly charged political role it already held in 1861, the year of its founding. An examination of the Nationalgalerie’s political significance formed the core of the talk by Peter-Klaus Schuster, general director of Berlin’s national art museum. He opened with the powerful observation that Ger- many had a national gallery before it had a nation. The extent to which an anticipation of political nationhood was embodied in this museum inevitably led to a neurotic preoccupation with the aesthetics of nationality, and thus museum concerns became political issues and vice-versa. From its foundation the art museum was a contested place where aggressive forms of nationalism—embodied in its 1871 inscription “Der Deutschen Kunst” (To German Art)—competed with a cosmopolitan attitude. The Nationalgalerie thus oscillated between being a temple of German art and a temple of the arts in Germany. The latter impulse, Schuster convincingly argued, ensured that the Nationalgalerie also retained a progressive element, carried forward by its directors, who often resisted attempts by official state politics to fully take over the institution. The prime example of a modernist inter-

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 80 national outlook is Hugo von Tschudi, the Nationalgalerie’s second director from 1896 to 1909, who not only bought progressive German art but also compiled an outstanding collection of French avant-garde painting. This cosmopolitanism ultimately cost Tschudi his job, but the spirit of his directorship has survived. “Today,” Schuster concluded, “the inscription ‘Der Deutschen Kunst 1871’ on the Alte Nationalgalerie has regained the interpretation given it by Tschudi: ‘Whatever may be helpful in ad- vancing German art, whatever has developed internationally through artistic exchange, whatever acquisitions cosmopolitan-minded benefactors make possible are collected in the Berlin Nationalgalerie and its various buildings for the pleasure and instruction of all.’” The tension between nationalism and cosmopolitanism in nineteenth- century German art and its interwovenness with the discourse of contemporary cultural politics also set the theme of Françoise Forster-Hahn’s talk on “Art Without a National Center: German Painting of the Nineteenth Century.” Already in the nineteenth century critics regarded diversity and the lack of “a” German school as hallmarks of German art. Forster-Hahn stressed that the cultural and political decentralization of Germany thus is not only the key to understanding the development of its arts but also provides the basis for any theorizing of German art. In her survey of the mul- tifaceted outlook of German art between the Romantic period and the beginnings of Expressionism in the twentieth century Forster-Hahn traced the history of the attempt among German artists and intellectuals to define what constitutes “Germanness” in German art. This debate informed the Nazarenes’ attempt to rejuvenate German art by inventing a utopian ideal modeled on the past as much as it stimulated the exploration of Deutschheit by Philipp Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich in images of nature. The search for Germanness is echoed by Gottfried Schadow’s proclamation that Germans could be seen as Germans only in works of art that portray concrete reality. The discourse about Germanness also imbued and complicated attempts to emulate the art of other nations as a model toward the end of the century, for example, Max Liebermann’s turn toward French Impressionism. Inevitably, the position of avant-garde artists who, like Liebermann, hailed a confraternity of the arts beyond national boundaries had a strong political dimension because it opposed the increasingly chau- vinist attitude of the Empire. For Forster-Hahn the Nationalgalerie itself can be read as a microcosm of the multiple and shifting interpretations of nineteenth- and twentieth-century German art. The talks by Schuster and Forster-Hahn provided the framework for the analysis of two specific subjects, namely, the significance of religion for the formation of Romantic art, on the one hand, and the realism of Adolph Menzel, on the other. In her talk on “Art’s Divine Nature: Changing Con-

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 81 structs of Religious Experience in German Romanticism” Cordula Grewe analyzed the historicist idiom of the Nazarenes as well as the landscape paintings of Caspar David Friedrich and Philipp Otto Runge as two expressions of the revival of religion around 1800. This return to religion after an era of an intellectualization of faith reflected the collapse of Enlighten- ment belief in rationalism as the sole basis for an understanding of the world and the construction of human value systems. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, the Romantics turned once again to religion as a source of meaning and a basis for art and ethics. In its first phase this renewed interest in religion found expression in new forms of Spinozism and pantheism, pro- claiming God’s immanence in nature. By the time the artists under examination came into maturity, however, this belief in the perfect fusion of subjec- tivity and nature had already been questioned by the very thinkers that had developed it in the first place. Thus, Grewe pointed out, both the Nazarenes and the landscape painters Friedrich and Runge engaged in the visualiza- tion of a religiosity that no longer viewed God as fully present in nature or, for that matter, in the depicted. Imbued with Pietist religiosity and filled with the Pietist ideal of empathy as a means of nearing the divine, Friedrich thus created highly subjective, even solipsistic images in which nature serves as the space to contemplate but no longer to see God. Friedrich’s religious and artistic position was, however, too personal, or one might say too Pi- etist, for the Nazarenes. Confronted with the same set of issues these painters, many of whom were Catholic, searched instead for a more objective idiom. Steeped in historicism, they appropriated the old masters as historically stabilized reference points. For both groups their search for religion was inexorably and inextrica- bly connected to the striving for a united German nation. In Friedrich’s case, his strong patriotic spirit led to a “German” iconography, for example, in the emphasis on specifically German vegetation such as the oak tree, traditionally regarded as the ultimate German tree, or the depiction of the so-called German coat, since 1819 a symbol for liberal–radical politics and national aspirations. Artistically, this spirit of Germanness also functioned as a bridge between Friedrich’s extreme subjectivism and the observer, because the political sought to function as the common ground between artist and audience. Although no less nationalistic in their attitude, the Nazarenes rejected such an unabashedly patriotic iconography. Although they, too, implemented symbols of Germanness in their art through the reception of Albrecht Dürer and other Northern artists, they also had a de- cisively international outlook that resulted from their striving for an eternal, atemporal, and thus supranational artistic ideal: In order to realize their core belief that modern religious art had to fuse the historical—that is, human history—with the eternal and atemporal as embodied in divine truth,

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 82 they appropriated the Italian masters, above all Raphael, in whom they saw the Christian spirit incarnated in the most beautiful form possible. Thus, the Nazarenes promoted as an ideal of German art that which combined a supranational, timeless ideal derived from the Italian Renaissance with an appropriation of northern art, regarded as the guarantee of Germanness. As Grewe concluded, a close examination of Friedrich and the Nazarenes shows surprising similarities between both groups on a theoretical and historical level, which is all too often overshadowed by the stark differences in their religious and artistic choices. In contrast to this contextual reading of two artistic movements within Romanticism, Michael Fried provided a hermeneutic and formalist interpretation of one specific artist, Adolph Menzel, one of the great realist painters of the nineteenth century and a dominant presence in the exhibition. In his engaging and evocative talk on “Menzel’s Realism: Art and Embodi- ment in the Nineteenth Century” Fried set out to examine in detail an artist who, despite his aesthetic qualities, is still almost unknown to American audiences. “His predominantly German reputation is not surprising,” Fried stated, because “nearly the whole of his production remains in Germany, most of it in Berlin, and until recently the bulk of his drawings were made largely inaccessible by their location on the other side of the Berlin Wall.” But there also is an aesthetic reason: Given the general orientation of Ameri- can audiences toward French modernism, Menzel’s utterly different idiom, his Germanness, so to speak, is difficult to comprehend. Fried illuminated Menzel’s stylistic idiosyncrasies and thus provided the audience with a set of tools to approach and read Menzel’s originality. Fried contended that the painter’s achievement, as well as his modernity, lies in the radicalness with which he relates his artistic practice to his own—and thus implicitly to our—embodiment. This means that the picto- rial treatment of distinct spatial zones seems keyed to the phenomenologi- cal truth of the body’s own situatedness. Menzel’s realism reflects the per- ception of a sighted corporeal being endowed with motility, rather than the disembodied “eye” limited to a single fixed point of view, as provided, for example, in classic Albertinian perspective or by the lens of a camera. To borrow a phrase from the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Menzel’s art represents a “lived perspective.” Fried insisted that Menzel, although unknown on this side of the Atlantic, should be considered “both as a painter and as draughtsman . . . as a titanic figure in nineteenth-century culture (not just in German painting).” With his passionate account of the formal qualities of Menzel’s art Fried successfully demonstrated that Menzel’s (as the “artist’s”) realism is not only interesting in terms of its social, political, or philosophical implications but that it also holds its position on a purely aesthetic level.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 83 In sum the symposium successfully united a kaleidoscope of themes, methods, and forms of presentation that in its variety showed what a rich topic nineteenth-century German art can be. It is to be hoped that the exhibition “The Spirit of an Age” will spark a greater interest among popular as well as academic audiences in this field of German culture.

Cordula Grewe

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 84 SEMINARS

YOUNG SCHOLARS FORUM 2001: GENDER, POWER, RELIGION—FORCES IN CULTURAL HISTORY

Seminar at the GHI, March 29–April 1, 2001. Convener: Vera Lind (GHI). Moderators: Deborah Cohen (American University), Dagmar Herzog (Michigan State University), Hartmut Lehmann (Max Planck Institute for History), Jerry Z. Muller (Catholic University), Lyndal Roper (University of London), David Sabean (UCLA), and Richard F. Wetzell (GHI).

The Young Scholars Forum is a new annual program designed to support American Ph.D. candidates and recent Ph.D. recipients working in the fields of German, German–American, and European history. It is intended as a meeting place for young scholars from throughout the United States where they can present their work, meet colleagues working in similar areas as well as senior scholars from Germany and the United States, and engage in a weekend of fruitful intellectual exchange and networking. Each annual meeting will focus on specific topics and/or methodological approaches, rather than a specific time period. The inaugural topic of the forum was chosen because a large number of younger scholars are currently working on topics that employ concepts of gender, power, and religion, and consider their work to fall within the framework of cultural history. This approach allowed for an in-depth discussion of specific topics over the course of five centuries because the different topics were held together by the same methodological concepts. It also allowed participants to re-evaluate important concepts that for the past twenty years have been continuously explored and established, and the broad chronological sweep allowed those who might otherwise never meet to discuss these issues. Twenty-one young scholars attended, as did seven senior scholars from Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. On the evening before the first session Lyndal Roper gave the keynote lecture, titled “The Figure of the Witch: Religion, Gender, and Sexuality in Early Modern European History.” She interpreted some early modern texts on witchcraft as contemporary expressions of humor and provided many points to ponder in the following days.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 85 The format of the sessions was intended to promote informal participation and collegiality. In order to have ample time for in-depth discussions the papers were circulated to participants in advance. In addition to writing a paper, the participants were also asked to deliver a ten-minute comment on one other paper, which served as the introduction to the discussions of papers in the different sessions. (The authors themselves provided no additional introduction.) There were nine thematically and chro- nologically organized sessions chaired by the senior scholars, who helped direct discussion but provided no formal comment. Session one focused on early modern issues of social control, the church, and sexuality. Katherine Crowther-Heyck investigated the sixteenth-century German discourse on reproduction in religious and medical texts, and the way these texts, which were written for a lay audience, interpreted the corporeal and social events surrounding conception, pregnancy, and child- birth. She stressed that human procreation was connected to the biblical story of creation, thus interweaving the spiritual and the eternal with the physical and the temporal. She concluded that “ideas about the body were changed by the religious controversies of the period.” In the second paper Ulrike Strasser contextualized shifting attitudes toward sexuality in Bavaria from the late-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century, during a period of Catholic confessionalization. She argued that state authorities purposefully implemented new marriage doctrines in order to prevent sexual unions of the lower classes in ways that affected men and women differently. Whereas the male honor code did not restrict sexual behavior outside of marriage, women of the lower orders were obligated to accept the boundaries of the new social order by avoiding sexual relations. Jason Coy completed the session with an analysis of the prosecution of adultery in sixteenth-century Ulm. He argued that a complex set of factors were at work in these cases, in which the offender’s place in local society, not gender, was the most decisive determination of punishment. Whereas adulterous servants were ex- pelled from the territory, justices tried to reintegrate females and males from enfranchised or artisan households in order to maintain the social and economic order. The papers of the second session centered on religion as a social and economic force from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Emily Fisher Gray explored conflicts over the use of shared religious spaces in two parishes in Augsburg between 1525 and 1648, one Catholic and one Protestant. She showed that throughout this period the city council, which controlled both parishes, attempted to balance interests and submerge distinctions in the name of “neighborliness” but actually reinforced and promoted the distinctions between the parishes and did not succeed in enforcing a communal identity. Katherine Carté analyzed how the economic structure of the

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 86 town of Bethlehem served the goals of the German religious community in Pennsylvania, known as the Moravians. The religious values of the Moravians shaped their economic system, which was communal, directed by the church, and devoted to supporting a large number of missionaries operating in the region. This meant that they suffered ongoing labor short- ages and financial problems because economic interest was not the first priority when church leaders developed economic policy. Session three dealt with early modern religion in the context of male power. Benjamin Marschke focused on the creation of a military church bureaucracy in Prussia that supposedly transformed a disorganized apparatus into a highly regimented state organ, a model example of absolutism and state control. In his attempt to understand how this early modern government really worked, Marschke was able to uncover ample evidence of “bureaucratic in-fighting and a Pietist patronage network and religious fac- tion” that actually manipulated the Prussian government in this area. Rather than serving the state, people controlling the chaplaincy served their own interests and bureaucratization, in fact legitimized an existing Pietist network. In his paper on Marian devotion in the eighteenth century, Duane Corpis showed how dynamic and actively changing local religious traditions clashed with authority when the church tried to reform devotional practices, especially as it attempted to extend its control into the private realm. He argued that the difficulties the church faced in controlling the communities stemmed from the resistance of competing and fractured interests in these communities, which felt that their social hierarchy was being threatened. The papers in session four dealt with gender and religious identity in the nineteenth century. Maria Baader stated that during this century women in German Judaism moved from a marginal position toward the center of Jewish culture. By adopting German middle-class ideas in their religious practices, women, with their alleged predisposition toward morality and religious sentiment, could make an important contribution to Judaism, which was now practiced more often in the domestic realm. Anthony Steinhoff looked into gender and religious identity at the end of the Kaiserreich in Protestant Strasbourg. Reinforced notions of the church as a private, feminine place, which was part of the general “feminization” of religion at the time, “frustrated efforts to reform local religious life as well as attempts to permit women a larger, official role in the churches as public institutions.” Examples for this can be seen in the debates over women’s right to vote or be elected to parish offices. Whereas Protestant churches in Alsace-Lorraine endorsed both reforms, the political authorities refused them, which shows how gender categories influenced sacred as well as secular power.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 87 The history of fashion was the topic of session five. Katherine Aaslestad analyzed discussions in the local press of Hamburg around 1800 on the political impact of new lifestyles, consumption patterns, and fashion. She found that the criticism of these new styles, in which the question of civic virtue played a major role compared to stereotypes of gender, “represent a republican world view that regarded public and private as fluid and over- lapping, and believed both spheres had a profound influence on the public welfare of the community.” A distinct shift becomes visible, one in which individual civil morality replaced the traditional concept of the benefit of the public. Irene Guenther focused on Nazi ambivalence toward the topic of fashion. Besides promoting a “cosmetics-free, smoke-free, dirndl-wear- ing” female image, the Nazis did not prevent international fashion and beauty trends from being published in German women’s magazines and did not take a stand on the capriciousness of party officials’ wives. She concluded that “women largely decided what they would and would not wear” and were able to do so because “a happy home front” was more important to the Nazi government than insisting on a proper political image for German women. In session six on culture and religion in Imperial Germany, Eva Bremner evaluated why Wilhelm II’s ambition to establish a cult of his father as a warrior king through countless monuments never caught on in the Ger- man public, even though Wilhelm I was extremely popular. She argued that this failure was caused by a completely different popular image of him. Wilhelm I intentionally had himself represented as a proud, gentle Hausvater, and his popularity was based on his “emotional accessibility,” a sentimen- tal image of the monarchy with which the public identified because it reflected middle-class social norms and tastes. Derek Hastings assessed the gendered aspects of the Munich Catholic academic community’s encoun- ter with “modernity.” Changing roles for women and a decline in national strength, among other factors, led to a crisis of masculinity around 1900. Male Catholic intellectuals in Munich thought that the church was becoming increasingly inhospitable to them and tried to prevent what they viewed as the intellectual feminization of Catholicism. Hastings suggested that this might be an effect of a Catholic masculine escapism when confronted with the intellectual challenges of modernity that sought refuge in a vision of the church that proved unrealistic and irrational. Session seven centered on political and social debates on morality and prostitution in Imperial and Weimar Germany. Julia Bruggemann investigated the regulation of prostitution in Imperial Hamburg to uncover how gender relations were constructed and contested, owing to the controversy surrounding this issue. She described the strange alliance of feminists and conservatives working to abolish regulated prostitution—the feminists be-

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 88 cause they viewed it as social injustice against the right of self-determination, and the conservatives out of fear that the state would become an evil accomplice if it regulated prostitution. Others argued that prostitution needed the protection of the state because it was a trade like any other. However, the power to regulate prostitution allowed city officials to define and control gender roles as well as female sexuality. Julia Roos concentrated on the connection of the prostitution debate and morality in the crisis of Weimar democracy. She explained how the dramatic changes in sexual morality, including efforts to decriminalize prostitution and homosexuality, for example, fueled the religious Right’s opposition to Weimar. She suggested that conservative politics in Weimar have to be explained in the context of shifts in gender relations and sexual attitudes after World War I, rather than as a continuation of pre-1919 political traditions. Conservatives took prostitution reform as a sign of spreading “immorality,” which was not a “psychological illusion” but based in social reality and which ultimately threatened to undermine public support for the Weimar democracy. Julie Stubbs’s paper examined gender and power in the context of the Weimar Law to Combat Venereal Disease of 1927, an attempt to solve the “prostitution problem” with social welfare policies instead of police control. She showed how the law was based on moral assumptions about the role of women in society and how notions of the specific “difference” of women could be used “for both emancipatory and discriminatory purposes.” It offered opportunities for bourgeois conformist women to enter professional work, for example social work, on the grounds of their innate female morality. Women who did not conform, like prostitutes, “face punitive social welfare programs aimed at their rehabilitation.” Session eight reviewed male identities in postwar Germany, both East and West. Andrew Bickford explored how militarization and family life shaped male identity in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). He argued that militarization served to counter the “demasculinization” that followed the legal goal of establishing equality between women and men because it promoted traditional forms of gender identity, when in fact men played an increasingly marginal role in family life and were more de- pendent on women for security than vice versa. Furthermore, the insistence that the Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) existed solely for peaceful purposes allowed men to reshape a positive militarized male identity after the crisis of masculinity in the postwar years, when men were blamed for the devasta- tion of war. Clayton Whisnant examined male homosexuality in the 1950s and 1960s in Hamburg, a city that went through a period of severe persecu- tion of gay activity during the Nazi years but became Germany’s center of homosexual activity after 1945 due to the city’s relatively tolerant police force and judical system. Whisnant identified four major groups of gay men,

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 89 each defined by a particular style of dress and behavior, and analyzed how these men constructed their masculinity within the cultural context of the time and in a quite different way from the image of the corrupting homosexual in public discourse. Definitions of masculinity and femininity in Imperial, Weimar, and Nazi Germany were the topics of session nine. Páll Björnsson focused on how gender images were constructed and used to influence municipal power structures by example of liberal men in Leipzig between 1840 and 1880. He argued that these men regarded themselves as the “midfathers” of an ideal man, a concept that influenced their images of private and public spheres and their vision of the state and nation. Their belief in masculinity was combined with ideals of freedom, independence, and German nationalism. Leipzig liberals believed that only a strong unified Germany would secure these ideals and provide conditions under which “masculine and independent” German men could continue their program. Erik Jensen presented an exploration of women’s boxing in Weimar Germany, until now an overlooked episode in the history of masculinity and femininity that provides insight into the emergence of new gender ideals in the Weimar Republic. Boxing enjoyed enormous popularity at the time, and the culture of female boxing carried specific images and role models. Jensen placed the popularity of female boxing in the context of the emergence of new gender ideals, new slender body images of women, and female physical power, which was nonetheless perceived by many as both aesthetically and biologically threatening. Todd Ettelson analyzed the gendered dimensions of the 1934 “Night of the Long Knives” in which around one-hundred SA men and others were executed by the SS and Gestapo. He described how diverse definitions of masculinity and male sexuality tried to make sense of what happened and concluded that this event played a critical role in determining boundaries between different state organizations and how they were organized and integrated into the state. The sessions ended with a final discussion that served as a summary of previous debates and as an opportunity to explore the concepts and meth- odologies connected with the study of gender, religion, and power over the five centuries covered by the Young Scholars Forum. The senior scholars gave their impressions of how these categories worked and in which way this new generation of scholars is changing the agenda by asking new questions. It seems as if this new generation is rapidly expanding the range of these cultural concepts as well as the greater context in which they pose their questions. There was a great emphasis on sexuality, homosexuality, and identity, especially masculine identity, but the papers did not stop there; rather, they used these topics in order to understand major social, political, and cultural changes.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 90 All in all, the participants impressed us not only with the high quality of their papers but also with their readiness to engage in debates across thematic and temporal boundaries. In addition, participants commenting on papers that were thematically close to their own work but concerned with a completely different period of time proved to be a successful way to engage everyone in the discussions and gain input from different view- points. All panels produced a wealth of insights, questions, and incentives for further research. The forum successfully fulfilled its mission by bring- ing younger scholars together for an intense weekend of debate, allowing them to reflect on their work, receive criticism, and broaden their horizons beyond their specific chronological or topical fields. It also offered them an opportunity to network among themselves and get to know some of the established scholars in these fields. The Young Scholars Forum would not have been possible without the support of the Friends of the GHI and generous funding from the Max Kade Foundation.

Vera Lind

Participants and Their Topics

KATHERINE AASLESTAD, University of West Virginia, “Reading Fashion, Read- ing Gender: The Dangers and Enticements of Mode Around 1800.”

MARIA BAADER, Columbia University, “From a Male Culture of Learning to a Religiosity Centered on Women: Gender and the Transformation of Ger- man Judaism, 1800–1870.”

ANDREW BICKFORD, Rutgers University, “Male Identity, the Military, and the Family in the Former German Democratic Republic.”

PÁLL BJÖRNSSON, University of Iceland, “The ‘Midfathers’ of the ‘New Men’: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Liberals in Leipzig.”

EVA BREMNER, Princeton University, “From Heldenkaiser to Hausvater: Wilhelm I as the King of Christmas.”

JULIA BRUGGEMANN, De Pauw University, “Gender Relations in Imperial Ger- many: A Case Study. Prostitution in Hamburg, 1870–1914.”

KATHERINE CARTÉ, University of Wisconsin, “Religion as a Force in Economic Culture: Business Practice Among Bethlehem’s Moravians, 1745–1761.”

DUANE CORPIS, Georgia State University, “Marian Pilgrimage and the Privi- leges of Male Power in Eighteenth-Century Germany.”

JASON COY, UCLA, “’Unchaste Acts’: Adultery, Status, and Social Control in Sixteenth-Century Ulm.”

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 91 KATHERINE CROWTHER-HEYCK, Swarthmore College, “Pregnant with Mean- ing: Sixteenth-Century Discourse on Reproduction.”

TODD ETTELSON, University of Michigan, “Old Warriors and New SA Men: Masculinity in ‘The Night of the Long Knives’.”

EMILY GRAY, University of Pennsylvania, “Good Neighbors: Communal Re- lations and Contested Religious Space in Augsburg, 1525–1648.”

IRENE GUENTHER, University of Texas/Houston Community College, “Fash- ioning Women in the Third Reich.”

DEREK HASTINGS, University of Chicago, “Fears of a Feminized Church: The Catholic Academic Community in Munich and the Crisis of Catholic Mas- culinity, 1890–1914.”

ERIK JENSEN, University of Wisconsin at Madison, “Boxing and the ‘New Women’ in Weimar Germany.”

BENJAMIN MARSCHKE, UCLA, “‘Unsere Parthey’: The Chaplaincy, Pietism, and Factionalism in Absolutist Prussia.”

JULIA ROOS, Carnegie Mellon University, “The Politics of ‘Immorality’: Pros- titution Reform, The ‘Moral’ Right, and the Crisis of Weimar Democracy.”

ANTHONY STEINHOFF, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, “Gendering Religious Identity in Imperial Germany: Evidence from Protestant Stras- bourg (1870–1914).”

ULRIKE STRASSER, University of California at Irvine, “State of Virginity: Gen- der, Religion, and Politics in Early Modern Bavaria.”

JULIE STUBBS, University of Michigan, “Rescuing ‘Morally Endangered’ Girls: Social Welfare Programs, Bourgeois Feminists, and the Law to Combat Ve- nereal Disease.”

CLAYTON WHISNANT, University of Texas, “Styles of Masculinity in the West German Gay Scene During the 1950s and Early 1960s.”

SEVENTH TRANSATLANTIC DOCTORAL SEMINAR IN GERMAN HISTORY: GERMANY IN THE AGE OF TOTAL WAR, 1914–1945

Seminar at the GHI and the BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University, April 25–28, 2001. Conveners: Roger Chickering (Georgetown University), Andreas W. Daum (GHI), and Richard F. Wetzell

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 92 (GHI). Moderators: Doris L. Bergen (University of Notre Dame), Deborah Cohen (American University), Ulrich Herbert (University of Freiburg), and Adelheid von Saldern (University of Hannover).

The sixteen doctoral students participating in this year’s Transatlantic Doc- toral Seminar (eight from the United States and eight from Germany) dealt with one of the most important and contested periods of German history. The years 1914 to 1945 include World War I, the Weimar Republic with its social polarization, political radicalization, and cultural diversity, as well as the Nazi dictatorship, the Holocaust, and World War II. Although historians have studied these subjects with remarkable thoroughness during the past decades, the participants of the Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar were able to present original research on and fresh insights into the history of this epoch. They demonstrated that it is worth leaving the trenches of previous historiographical debates—be it the debate between the so-called structuralists and intentionalists or that between advocates and critics of Alltagsgeschichte —in order to draw a highly differentiated picture of how German society, culture, and politics developed and changed between 1914 and 1945. Following the well established format of the Transatlantic Doctoral Seminars, a highly competitive program that began in 1995, the 2001 conference allotted a maximum of time for discussion. Instead of delivering papers at the seminar, the participants submitted their papers in advance. Drawn from the doctoral projects, these papers were either case studies, drafts of dissertation chapters, or summaries of the dissertation projects. These texts were circulated to all participants prior to the seminar, which was organized in eight panels with two papers each. Each panel began with two students commenting on two papers, and the authors of these papers were then given an opportunity to respond before the general discussion began. The conveners particularly appreciated that four experts in the field of German history between 1914 and 1945—Doris Bergen, Deborah Cohen, Ulrich Herbert, and Adelheid von Saldern—agreed to serve as moderators and enriched the discussion with their comments. Several papers focused on aspects of intellectual history in Germany. Peter Hoeres compared the attitudes of German philosophers toward war during the two world wars. According to Hoeres, German philosophers generated a genuine “philosophy of war” only during World War I, even though there were efforts aiming at a closer alignment between the universities and the state during World War II. Harald Haury sketched the philosophical and theological profile of Johannes Müller, an advocate of a Ger- man-völkisch Christianity who emerged from the turn-of-the-century Lebensreform movement and attracted a remarkably diverse audience. Al-

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 93 though Müller remained a marginal figure, his thinking reflected important ideas in liberal Protestant theology. Andrea Meissner examined the role of historical thinking in Prussia, Bavaria, and German-speaking Aus- tria between 1918 and 1938 by analyzing schoolbooks and schoolbook policy for elementary schools. She emphasized the creation of political myths that were designed to establish collective identities such as nation and especially Volk, the latter of which gained increasing prominence in Germany. Two papers investigated the relationship between knowledge, institutions, and politics. Gideon Botsch studied the formation of the Auslands- wissenschaftliches Institut (Institute for Foreign Affairs) in Berlin shortly after the outbreak of war in 1939. He examined this institution both against the background of the development of the academic study of international relations in Germany and the efforts by the Sicherheitsdienst and other Nazi organizations to gain control of this particular branch of social science. The relationship between domestic politics and foreign affairs also stood at the center of Holger Impekoven’s paper on the role of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and its programs for foreign students during the Third Reich. Impekoven argued that the Humboldt Foundation, founded in 1925, came under increasing pressure from the German Foreign Office to adapt its programs for foreign students to Nazi policies. This trend became dominant after the beginning of the war and transformed the foundation’s work into a part of German occupation policy. Three of the seminar’s papers addressed the question of the definition of what constituted a German and what marked non-German minorities during the Nazi period. Thomas Pegelow analyzed the linguistic devices applied by the Reich Kinship Office and those petitioning this office in constructing identities of Jewishness, non-Jewishness, and Mischlinge (“people of mixed race”). According to Pegelow, the relevant legal and cultural definitions were so vague that they offered opportunities for constructing individual identities by manipulating a seemingly common understanding of Germanness versus Jewishness and thus allowed space for contesting interpretations. Chad Bryant examined similar issues in his study of nationality politics in the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia between 1939 and 1946. He pointed out that the actual marking of German nationality was an uneven und confused process that left the nationality of many people un- clear and therefore subject to political decision making. National Socialist policies aimed at removing the ascription of nationality from individual choice to a decision handed down from above. Gregory Caplan contributed to German–Jewish history by studying Jewish veterans of World War I, in particular the League of Jewish Frontline Veterans, established in 1919, and their attempts to prove themselves as nationally minded Germans through militaristic attitudes tied to a notion of German masculinity. This

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 94 strategy, however, not only alienated these veterans’ organization from Zi- onists and liberal Jews but also failed to gain the approval of the National Socialist regime. The multiple consequences of World War I in German society also were the topic of the papers by Jason Crouthamel and Sandra Mass. Crouthamel sought to trace the history of war neurosis in Germany “from below.” He demonstrated that, due to class interests and politically divergent views, different veterans groups pursued differing strategies of legitimizing trauma and psychological wounds in their dealings with state authorities and the general public. Mass examined German protests against the presence of African occupation soldiers in the Rhineland, which included representatives of all political stripes. Her study focused on the use of colonial, gender, and body metaphors that not only established racial distinctions but also allowed German society to address the suffering of the male body during World War I. Chad Ross, too, addressed the relationship between body, society, and nation. He interpreted the German nudist movement as an effort to conflate the categories of health, beauty, and race through the use of antiscientific and antiurban stereotypes. The living conditions and social characteristics of specific social groups were explored by Rebecca Hoßbach, Christoph Rass, and Julia Torrie. Hoßbach depicted the ambivalences of National Socialist agrarian politics that maneuvered between the opposing poles of agrarian modernization and völkisch ideology. For her case study she concentrated on the effects that the Reichserbhofgesetz of 1933 had on the rural estates and agrarian population in Mecklenburg. Rass examined the 253rd Infantry Division to study the social and generational profile of the German army through a prosopographical analysis. He sought to explain the radicalized behavior of these soldiers during the war as a result of specific patterns of socialization during the prewar years. Torrie investigated the social reality of World War II by examining protests against civilian evacuations in the Ruhr region, particularly in Witten in 1943. She interpreted these protests as evidence of small- scale dissent in a population that was willing to challenge party and state orders when their own housing and family situations were affected. Two papers explored the realm of culture in the interwar years. Rachel Nussbaum examined the efforts of the Berlin Volksbühne and the Kroll Op- era to develop a republican and democratic artistic program. Both institutions, however, could not free themselves from the bourgeois concepts of Bildung that had dominated cultural activities before World War I. Jana Bruns extended the discussion of culture into the years after 1930. Her paper discussed the rise of Marika Rökk as an entertainment star whose films became increasingly extravagant and epitomized Goebbels’s loss of control over Germany’s cultural life at the end of the war as well as the failure of the project of creating a truly National Socialist film culture.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 95 The content of the papers presented and the ensuing discussions were an embarrassment of riches that defies simple summary. Several historiographical trends, however, did emerge during the three-day meeting. As already evident in previous Transatlantic Doctoral Seminars, the projects reflected a fundamental pluralism of topics and an undogmatic, eclectic, and flexible use of theoretical approaches and methodological tools. Even if one takes into account that the sixteen research projects represented only a sample from a much broader field, it became clear that topics addressing issues of identity, culture, the body, ideology, and the history of various academic disciplines had a certain prominence without, however, displacing work that examines the creation of political and social power structures. By contrast, many “classic” topics, including the history of the welfare state, the political parties, the inflation, foreign policy, the rise of the Nazi movement, and the role of prominent individuals (above all Hitler himself), remained in the background. This shift in research topics reflects changing methodological preferences and interests, such as the rise of a new cultural history, and is certainly one factor that explains the relative absence of old (or new) controversies during the seminar. Neither the Sonderweg debate nor the dispute over structuralist versus intentionalist explanations of Nazi rule, nor, finally, the Goldhagen or Wehrmacht debates, for example, played any significant role during the seminar. Most of the papers focused on the time after 1933 and were more interested in examining the development of German society than in studying the political systems as such. They also suggested that the political systems themselves—be it the Weimar Republic, the Nazi dictatorship, or the wartime economic and administrative orders—were less monolithic and ho- mogeneous than previously assumed. The discussions clearly showed that this increased sensitivity to ambiguities and contradictions, even within the Nazi regime, has nothing to do with moral indifference, a point that must be stressed when such research is presented to the broader public on both sides of the Atlantic, which sometimes longs for simple explanations. The growing awareness of the complexity of concepts such as National So- cialism became particularly clear in the seminar’s discussions on Nazi ideology, which emerged as a set of diverse ideological elements (including concepts such as race, Volk, and anti-Semitism) that were often linked but could also be separated and pursued independently from one another. Many of the papers and much of the discussion carefully examined both the “constraints” and the “room for maneuver” (Knut Borchardt) in the Nazi period in particular. The seminar’s discussions provided much fine-grained analysis of the Nazi-specific constraints and the longer-term structural processes that framed, for example, the development of popular culture. They also suggested that people’s “room for maneuver” was probably greater under National Socialism than previously assumed, in

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 96 part because internal contradictions and changes in Nazi policy left room for disagreement and nonconformity. The seminar discussions repeatedly stressed the importance of long-term structural developments and the need to assess continuities and discontinuities beyond symbolic dates such as 1933 and 1945. Indeed, “1933” seemed to erode more and more as a watershed, and it became clear that “1945,” too, needs to be reconsidered in its meaning for the German population. In this context the seminar also underscored the importance of comparative perspectives, be they between different European societies or across the Atlantic, in order to judge the course of German history in the age of total war. The conveners of the Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar were gratified that the collegial atmosphere and friendly tone that have characterized previous seminars also marked this year’s meeting. All participants demonstrated a remarkable readiness to engage with one another’s work and to share their ideas and suggestions. Finally, the conveners wish to thank the staffs of the GHI and the BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown for their support in making the seminar a success.

Andreas W. Daum Richard F. Wetzell

Participants and Their Topics

GIDEON T. B OTSCH, Free University of Berlin, “Auslandswissenschaften: Zur Entstehung und Anwendung politikwissenschaftlicher Auslandsstudien im Zeitalter des Totalen Krieges.”

JANA BRUNS, Stanford University, “A German Ginger Rogers? Marika Rökk and National Socialist Entertainment Politics.”

CHAD BRYANT, University of California at Berkeley, “What’s a German? Na- tionality and Nationality Politics in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, 1939–1946.”

GREGORY A. CAPLAN, Georgetown University, “Wicked Sons, German He- roes: Jewish Soldiers, Veterans, and Memories of World War I in Germany.”

JASON CROUTHAMEL, Indiana University, “Invisible Traumas: Psychological Wounds, World War I, and German Society.”

HARALD HAURY, University of Freiburg, “Welterweckung zwischen Geist und Genen: Johannes Müller (1864–1949) als Theologe, Unternehmer und Seelen- führer eines deutsch-völkischen Christentums zwischen Lebensreform- bewegung und nationalsozialistischer Ideologie.”

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 97 PETER HOERES, University of Münster, “Ein dreißigjähriger Krieg der deutschen Philosophie? Philosophische Kriegsdeutung im Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg.”

REBECCA HOSSBACH, University of Rostock, “Bauernalltag in Mecklenburg. Das Reichserbhofgesetz und seine Umsetzung 1933–1939.”

HOLGER IMPEKOVEN, University of Bonn, “‘Die geistige Wehr des neuen Europa ausbilden’: Die Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung und das Aus- länder-studium im ‘Dritten Reich’.”

SANDRA MASS, European University Institute, Florence, “Die ‘Schwarze Schmach’: Propaganda, Rassismus und Geschlecht in der Weimarer Republik.”

ANDREA MEISSNER, Humboldt University of Berlin, “‘Deutschland muß leben, und wenn wir sterben müssen’: Nationalistische Geschichtspolitik an den Volksschulen Preußens, Bayerns und des deutschsprachigen Österreich im Vergleich, 1918 bis 1933/1938.”

RACHEL NUSSBAUM, Cornell University, “A New Musical Community: The Berlin Volksbühne, the Kroll Opera, and the Politics of Cultural Reform.”

THOMAS PEGELOW, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “(Re-) Con- structing ‘Germanness’ and ‘Jewishness’: The Reich Kinship Office and the Discursive Engagements of German Jews, ‘Mischlinge,’ and Non-Jewish Germans over Legal and Cultural Identities in Nazi Germany.”

CHRISTOPH RASS, Technical University of Aachen, “‘Menschenmaterial’: Sozialprofil, Herrschaftsstrukturen, und Handlungsmuster einer Infanterie- division der Wehrmacht im Zweiten Weltkrieg.”

CHAD ROSS, University of Missouri at Columbia, “Building a Better Body: Health, Race, and Nudism.”

JULIA TORRIE, Harvard University, “Testing Totalitarianism at War: The Witten Demonstration and German Civilian Evacuations, 1939–1945.”

SUMMER SEMINAR IN PALEOGRAPHY AND ARCHIVAL STUDIES, JUNE 17–30, 2001

Participants in the 2001 Summer Seminar in Paleography and Archival Stud- ies, co-sponsored by the GHI and the German Department of the University of Wisconsin—Madison, enjoyed two productive and informative weeks in Germany during the second half of June. As was the case in the past two

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 98 years, the program started in Koblenz, where we were hosted by the Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz. There, the participants received an introduction to older styles of German handwriting, mainly from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The instructors this year were Drs. Walter Rummel and Norbert Wex. The group was introduced to different styles of handwriting and spent several hours during the first week deci- phering various documents. We also received an interesting tour of this important repository for the Middle Rhine region, where regional, national, and international histories meet. Also during the first week the seminar traveled to Bonn in Nordrhein- Westfalen and to Karlsruhe and Rastatt in Baden-Württemberg. In Bonn, Dr. Thomas Becker, director of the University Archive, gave us a tour of the collection and demonstrated the value of university archives generally by way of particular items from the collection. Examples included matricula- tion documents for Karl Marx, Konrad Adenauer, and Joseph Goebbels. In Karlsruhe we visited the Badisches Generallandesarchiv, where we toured the facility with archivist Dr. Clemens Rehm and learned about what can be found in a regional archive. In Rastatt we were greeted by Prof. Wolfgang Michalka, the director of the Erinnerungsstätte für die 1848 Bewegung—an exhibition center initiated by former Federal President Gustav Heinemann. Participants were reminded of the importance of this democratic moment in nineteenth-century Germany as well as of the connection between 1848 and subsequent immigration of revolutionaries to the United States. To round out the week the group visited the Bundesarchiv on the Karthause above Koblenz. Archivist Dr. Hans-Dieter Kreikamp gave us a tour of the facility as well as an introduction to using records at the federal level. Immediately following, the participants met with two young Ger- man historians—Dr. Philipp Gassert of the University of Heidelberg and Anette Neff of the Technical University of Darmstadt. Gassert presented his current research project—a biography of Kurt Georg Kiesinger, Ger- man federal chancellor during the Grand Coalition of the 1960s. Neff talked about her work on American occupation policy in rural Germany in the immediate post-World War II years. Both presentations allowed the group to ask both practical and theoretical questions about planning a fruitful research trip to Germany. Members of the seminar found this session particularly rewarding. At week’s end we traveled to Cologne, where we spent a pleasant weekend on the Rhine River. Monday morning took the participants to the His- torical Archive of the City of Cologne, the largest of its kind in the Federal Republic. Archivists Drs. Eberhard Illner and Manfred Huiskes discussed this archive’s collections as well as the various published aids to researching historical subjects in Germany, using the examples of Cologne and the

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 99 Rheinland. Whereas Illner covered the modern period, Huiskes discussed the medieval era. The group also visited the archive’s workshop where damaged materials are restored or repaired, often using artful techniques that aim to conserve fragile items for centuries to come. Illner treated us to local refreshments at Brauerei zur Malzmühle, located not far from the dry air inside the archive stacks. Last but not least, the group had the opportunity to get to know Andrew Oppenheimer of the University of Chicago, who is in Cologne researching his dissertation on anticommunism in postwar West Germany. On Tuesday we visited the Historical Archive of the Archbishopric of Cologne. Archivist Dr. Joachim Oepen sketched a history of the church, church/state relations, and church records in Germany. Using the example of the Cologne region, Oepen demonstrated how church archives can con- tain a variety records on important social, cultural, and political issues. Ex- amples from the collection were also viewed. Oepen reminded the group how much archival material mounts each year, whereby nearly 50 percent(!) of the archive’s holdings have been added since 1945. In the afternoon the group traveled by train to the small city of Gotha in the Free State of Thuringia, where we would spend the remainder of the trip. The program was generously and graciously hosted by the University of Erfurt. At the Forschungsbibliothek Gotha housed in the Schloss Frieden- stein—a component of the Erfurt University library—participants spent three mornings learning about the organization of libraries in Germany as well as about manuscripts and the history of das Buch. The group was wel- comed on the first morning by Prof. Ursula Lemkuhl, vice president of the university, and Rupert Schaab, head of the Forschungsbibliothek. Lemkuhl informed the group that her university recently established two separate fellowships—pre-doc and post-doc—for young American scholars working on topics related to the culture, society, economy, history, and politics of Central Europe and who need to consult the holdings of the Forschungs- bibliothek (e-mail: [email protected]). Following the introductions, Dr. Stephanie Hartmann gave us an overview of the library system in the Federal Republic, stressing the federalism inherent in a system that also reflects the splintered and tumultuous history of Germany since the Middle Ages. That history has left a strong regional imprint on book collecting and library organization into the present. She reminded us that, much like any search for archival material in Ger- many, the researcher has to be prepared to look in specific locations for literature. There is no central collection point for Germany for all times, nor is there a centralized catalog. Decentralization and regionalism are key concepts when searching for books in German libraries. Hartmann’s overview was followed by a tour of this very special collection of bound manuscripts, incunables, and

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 100 old books from Europe and the Near East. Günther Rennau, a staff member at the Forschungsbibliothek, was our witzig and knowledgeable guide through the stacks.

Upper Gallery of the Forschungsbibliothek Gotha.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 101 On our second day in Gotha, Cornelia Hopf presented brief histories of manuscripts (Handschriften) and private papers (Nachlässe) using examples from the Forschungsbibliothek. The Forschungsbibliothek has nearly 10,000 Handschriften. The students learned about how manuscript pages, made of parchment, were first organized into bound volumes and how one goes about dating such manuscripts using the physical signs and details inside and outside each tome. Hopf also told us about the slow process of catalog- ing manuscripts, whereby it takes nearly five years to catalog between 100 and 150 volumes. Day three saw two presentations. The first, by Dr. Juliane Bransch, covered the ongoing project of publishing an annotated edition of the diaries of Friedrich I, duke of Saxony-Gotha-Coburg. Two volumes, containing tran- scriptions of the diaries, have appeared in print so far. The commentary and explanatory notes will appear in a third volume. Friedrich I was the son of Ernst the Pious, the builder of Schloss Friedenstein and the founder of the library’s original core collection. Next, Herr Schaab talked about the era of incunables—the “infancy” of book printing in the fifty years following Guttenberg’s invention—and subsequent book production, again using examples from the library’s extensive and rich collections. Germany was the center of early book production, where two-thirds of all books were published. Only later did printing expand into Holland (seventeenth century) and then France (eighteenth century). The group traveled once again to Schnepfenthal, the home of the Salzmann School and the site of Germany’s first designated gymnastics course. Here, auf dem Lande, we were treated to a very pleasant evening as guests of Profs. Lehmkuhl and Wolfgang Helbig. Later in the week we took the train to Erfurt to visit the Biblioteca Amploniana, an astounding collection of early bound manuscripts. Ekkehard Döbler lectured on the history of this library and showed us some of its rarities. The GHI and the University of Wisconsin’s German Department are grateful to everyone involved in helping to make this year’s program a success. For information on the 2002 program, see the announcement on page 113 of this issue.

Daniel S. Mattern

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 102 NEWS

THE DEBATE ON THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE BERLINER STADTSCHLOSS

On April 2, 2001, the GHI held a workshop on the debate surrounding the proposed reconstruction of the former Royal City Palace, the Berliner Stadtschloss. Christof Mauch of the GHI provided the introduction and presented the speakers. Wilhelm von Boddien, chairman of the Society to Promote the Berliner Stadtschloss, then began the discussion by making a strong case for reconstruction. Dr. Hans-Ulrich Seidt, Head of the Cultural Section of the German Embassy, chaired the panel and responded. The controversy surrounding the Stadtschloss began some fifty years ago, when the government of East Germany had the war-damaged castle torn down. The debate was revived in 1993, when Wilhelm von Boddien erected an artificial façade to create the impression of a “reconstructed castle.” Ever since, a war of words on reconstruction has captured the public imagination in Germany. The event was attended by students, GHI fellows, and the interested public, all of whom engaged in a lively, at times even heated, debate surrounding the central issue of the role of historical memory and monuments in contemporary society.

THE LIFE OF HENRY VILLARD (1835–1900)

The life of Henry Villard (1835–1900)—German immigrant to the United States, American journalist, and entrepreneur—was the topic of a lecture by Alexandra Villard de Borchgrave at the Carl Schurz Auditorium of the Ger- man Embassy in Washington. The event was organized by the Cultural De- partment of the German Embassy, the Goethe Institute/Inter Nationes, and the GHI. Introduced by the German Cultural attache, Dr. Hans-Ulrich Seidt, Villard de Borchgrave, Henry Villard’s great-granddaughter and a renowned photographer, presented the findings from her biography of Villard, co- authored with John Cullen (Villard: The Life and Times of an American Titan, New York, 2000). Villard de Borchgrave gave a colorful picture of this remarkable personality whose life reflects the vicissitudes of American his-

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 103 tory between the Civil War and the Gilded Age. After his immigration to the United States in 1853, Villard became a famous journalist who covered the Lincoln–Douglas debates and launched one of the first news services in the country. He later embarked on the promising but risky railroad business and became president of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. Villard enthusiastically shared the vision of an electrified society and paved the way for what became known as the General Electric Company. The lecture was followed by a question-and-answer period and a book signing.

LIBRARY REPORT

Among the GHI Library’s new acquisitions is the Deutsches Biographisches Archiv 1960–1999 (DBA III) on microfiche. The DBA III has about 220,000 biographical entries for more than 180,000 people and therefore offers a comprehensive picture of the political, cultural, and social developments in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. The personal data for each entry are listed in chronological order, thereby making it possible for the researcher to follow the changes in the biographical profiles of each person. Together with the Deutsches Biographisches Archiv I and II, the GHI Library now offers a complete data- base for biographical references from the eighteenth century through 1999. The GHI would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the persons and institutions that have donated books to the Library. We very much appreciate your support.

RECIPIENTS OF THE GHI’S DISSERTATION AND HABILITATION SCHOLARSHIPS, 2002

GUDRUN HENTGES, “Staat und Politik: Die Bundeszentrale für Heimatdienst/ politische Bildung (1945–1975).” Adviser: Christoph Butterwegge, Univer- sity of Cologne.

MATTHEW KERR, “The Medical Case and the German Medical Profession.” Adviser: Norman J. W. Goda, Ohio University

ULRIKE KIRCHBERGER, “Die protestantische Indianermission in Nordamerika während des 18. Jahrhunderts in ihrem transatlantischen Kontext.” Adviser: Hermann Hiery, University of Bayreuth.

BRIAN MCCOOK, “Conflict and Concord: Ethnicity and Class in the Coal Min- ing Communities of the Ruhr and Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1880–1924.” Adviser: Gerald D. Feldman, University of California at Berkeley.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 104 DANIELA MÜNKEL, “Willy Brandt und die “Vierte Gewalt: Politik, Massen- medien und politische Kultur in der Bundesrepublik der fünfziger und sechziger Jahre.” Adviser: Adelheid von Saldern, University of Hannover.

ROLAND POPP, “US-amerikanisch–iranische Beziehungen vor dem Hinter- grund der Neuordnung der Golfregion 1963–1973.” Adviser: Jost Dülffer, University of Cologne.

JON-ERIC SCHMITZ, “Enemies Among Us: The Relocation, Internment, and Repatriation of German, Italian, and Japanese Americans During the Sec- ond World War.” Adviser: Allan J. Lichtman, American University.

FRANK SCHUMACHER, “How Unique was the American Empire? The United States and Great Britain in the Age of Imperialism, 1865–1918.” Adviser: Ursula Lehmkuhl, University of Erfurt.

RUPINDER SINGH, “Complex Ideal of Pure Form: German Architectural Theory, 1879-1910.” Adviser: M. Christine Boyer, Princeton University.

SIMON WENDT, “Armed Resistance and the Problem of Nonviolence in the African–American Civil Rights Movement.” Adviser: Manfred Berg, Free University of Berlin.

NEW PUBLICATIONS

The GHI is delighted to announce the publication of Die USA und Deutsch- land im Zeitalter des Kalten Krieges 1945–1990: Ein Handbuch, edited by Detlef Junker, the former director of the GHI, Philipp Gassert, a GHI research fellow until 1999, Wilfried Mausbach, a GHI research fellow until 2000, and David B. Morris, editor at the GHI until 2000. One hundred thirty-two authors contributed 146 articles to the handbook, which is organized in five sections: politics, security, economics, culture, and society. Offering wide-ranging insight into the German–Ameri- can postwar experience, this two-volume handbook is an excellent source for scholars and lay readers alike who are interested in twentieth-century German–American relations.

INTERNSHIP PROGRAM AT THE GHI

During 2001 a number of very bright and lively interns supported the work of the Institute. We aimed at making their stay in Washington as interesting and worthwhile as possible and were rewarded with outstanding contri-

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 105 butions to our projects. Interns helped in the research on the history of the Institute’s historic building, the Woodbury Blair mansion, worked on a major project in the National Archives’ Berlin Document Center collection, par- ticipated in the preparation and conduct of our conferences and lectures, supported our editorial work, and proved helpful to our endeavors in many other ways. It was a pleasure having them here and we’re glad to report that all of them enjoyed their stay immensely. We would like to thank: SUSANNE HERZOG (Free University of Berlin, Febuary to April), CHRISTOPH BOTTIN (University of Rostock, March to April), summer interns MICHELLE BAKER (St. Olaf College, currently spending her junior year in Russia), CORINNA UNGER (SUNY Albany, now back at Humboldt University, Berlin), and NICOLA HAGEN (University of Virginia, now back at the University of Dortmund). For more information on our internship program, please contact Dr. Raimund Lammersdorf, e-mail: [email protected].

STAFF CHANGES

CHRISTOPH BOTTIN, Technical Assistant, joined the staff of the GHI in August 2001 after interning there at the beginning of the year. He studied political science, history, and philosophy at the University of Rostock.

ANDREAS W. D AUM, Research Fellow and most recently deputy to the acting director (May through September 2001), left the Institute in September 2001 to accept the John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellowship at Harvard University. He will continue his research on “America’s Berlin, 1945–1963” and on topics of German cultural and intellectual history.

MONIKA HEIN, Librarian, left the GHI in June 2001 to return to her position as reference librarian at the Bundestagsbibliothek in Berlin.

KATHARINA KLOOCK, Librarian, was born in Regensburg, Germany. She completed a degree in library science at the University of Bonn in 1995. She previously worked at the Institute of Anglo-American History at the Uni- versity of Cologne.

DANIEL S. MATTERN, Senior Editor, left the Institute in August after nine years to assume the position as Assistant Director of the Nanovic Institute for Euro- pean Studies at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. As En- glish-language editor since 1992, and as senior editor since 1998, Dr. Mattern

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 106 oversaw the production of books in the Institute’s series with Cambridge Uni- versity Press, as well as in-house publications such as the Bulletin, reference guides, and occasional papers. Over the years he also edited scholarly papers, articles, and book reviews for directors, deputy directors, and research fellows, organized the GHI’s Summer Program, and supported the staff in editorial, scholarly, and technical matters. While at the GHI, Dr. Mattern also taught at Georgetown University and the University of Virginia, wrote book reviews, translated and edited educational materials, gave talks at conferences, as well as published, with Philipp Gassert, The Hitler Library: A Bibliography (Westport, Conn., 2001). At the University of Notre Dame, Dr. Mattern will be responsible for helping to direct the expanding activities of the Nanovic Institute. He also will teach German and European history part-time in the History Department.

DAVID LAZAR, Editor, joined the GHI in September 2001. He previously was the senior editor of English-language publications at the German Informa- tion Center in New York.

AFAF MORGAN, Technical Assistant, left the GHI in July 2001 to be with her children.

ANNETTE PUCKHABER, Visiting Research Fellow, was recently awarded her doctorate from the University of Trier and is currently working on a research project titled “The Efficiency of the Reorientation: German Student Exchange to the United States Between 1946 and 1952.”

BERND SCHÄFER, Research Fellow, joined the Institute in June 2001. He studied history, Catholic theology, and political science at the Universities of Vienna and Tübingen (M.A., 1988). He received an M.P.A. from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (1991) and a Ph.D. from the University of Halle (1997). His book Staat und katholische Kirche in der DDR was published in 1998 and received the Förderpreis of the Gesellschaft für Deutschlandforschung. From 1993 to 1997 he worked in Berlin with the East German Catholic Commission on screening GDR files. Between 1998 and 2001 he was a fellow at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totali- tarianism at the Technical University of Dresden. Schäfer is currently working on a study of “American ‘Triangular Diplomacy’ and Totalitarian States, 1969–1976.” His research interests include international Cold War history and West and East German history from 1945 to 1990 and beyond.

JÖRG SCHRÖDER, Deputy Administrative Director, was born in Monschau, Nordrhein-Westfalen. Before joining the Institute in February 2001, he worked at the Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women, and Youth in Bonn.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 107 CHRISTOPH STRUPP, Research Fellow since April 2001, was born in 1966. After studying history, politics, and Dutch philology at the universities of Co- logne and Leyden (Netherlands), he earned a Ph.D. in history from the Uni- versity of Cologne in 1996. His dissertation on Johan Huizinga’s concept of cultural history has been published as Johan Huizinga: Geschichtswissenschaft als Kulturgeschichte (Göttingen, 2000) and received the Offermann–Hergarten Award from the University of Cologne. He has published articles in such periodicals as Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter, Historische Zeitschrift, the Jahrbuch für Niederlande-Studien, and elsewhere. Before joining the GHI, Strupp taught at the universities of Heidelberg (1997– 9) and Cologne (2000–01). His current research project, “Scientists, Scholars, and the State: Germany and the United States in World War I,” looks at the impact of university-trained experts on the war administration of both countries. His research interests include historiography, German and Dutch cultural and political history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the history of philanthropy in Germany and the United States.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 108 EVENTS

FALL 2001 LECTURE SERIES

The History of the Senses

Seeing, smelling, touching, hearing, tasting—the world discloses itself to humans through the senses. Although this seems to be a highly individual process producing as many realities as there are people, it is also shaped by shared cultural norms and assumptions. What smells good in one society might be considered a bad odor in another. Likewise, what was an exquis- ite taste for seventeenth-century gourmets might be intolerable to modern palates. With the growing interest in the history of the body, scholars have recently begun to explore the history of sensual experiences in different periods and cultures. They are producing fascinating work that is provid- ing new insight into human culture and values. Our fall lecture series high- lights some of their findings.

September 20 Robert Jütte (Institut für die Geschichte der Medizin der Robert Bosch Stiftung) The Five Senses During and After Industrialization October 2 E. Ann Matter (University of Pennsylvania) Visionary Science in Medieval Germany: Hildegard von Bingen’s SCIVIAS October 18 David Howes (Concordia University) Freud’s Nose: The Denigration of Olfaction and the Birth of Psychoanalysis November 1 Emily Thompson (University of Pennsylvania) The Reverberations of History: The Culture of Listening and the Reconstruction of the Past November 16 Marjorie O’ Rourke Boyle (University of Toronto) Adam’s Finger: Michelangelo’s Touch? December 6 Constance Classen (Concordia University) Chocolate Ice Cream and Hot Orange Light: A Tasteful Explora- tion of Modern Art

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 109 MEDIEVAL HISTORY SEMINAR OCTOBER 25–28, 2001

The inaugural Medieval History Seminar for German and American doctoral candidates in medieval history will take place at the GHI from October 25 to 28, 2001. The mentors for the seminar will be: Michael Borgolte (Humboldt University of Berlin), Caroline Walker Bynum (Co- lumbia University), Johannes Fried (University of Frankfurt), and Patrick J. Geary (University of California at Los Angeles). A detailed report will follow in the spring 2002 Bulletin. For further information, see our Web site at www.ghi-dc.org or contact Dr. Christoph Strupp, e-mail: [email protected].

ANNUAL LECTURE 2001

On November 8, 2001, Caroline Walker Bynum (Columbia University) will deliver the fifteenth Annual Lecture on “Violence in Late Medieval Art and Religion.” The text of the lecture will be published in the spring 2002 issue of the Bulletin.

FRIENDS OF THE GHI FRITZ STERN DISSERTATION PRIZE

The Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize committee, under the leadership of Dr. Jonathan Petropoulos of Claremont McKenna College, has narrowed the field of Prize applicants to eight finalists. Dr. Petropoulos, Dr. Eliza- beth Heinemann (University of Iowa), and Dr. James Brophy (Univer- sity of Delaware) are now in the process of selecting the two prizewin- ners. The announcement of the two winners is expected at the end of September, and their projects will be presented to the interested public at the annual Friends’ symposium on November 9, 2001, at the GHI. The texts of the two presentations will be published in the spring 2002 edition of the Bulletin.

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 110 YOUNG SCHOLARS FORUM 2002 WAR AND SOCIETY: GERMANY AND EUROPE IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE, MARCH 21–24, 2002

The GHI and the Friends of the GHI are pleased to announce the second annual Young Scholars Forum, to be held in Washington, D.C., from March 21 to 24, 2002. The forum is designed to bring together American Ph.D. candidates and recent Ph.D. recipients for a weekend of scholarly discussion and collaboration. Young, promising scholars will have the opportunity to present their work to their peers as well as to distinguished scholars from both sides of the Atlantic. Participants should be working in the fields of German, German–American, European, or comparative history. The theme for 2002 is “War and Society: Germany and Europe in His- torical Perspective.” Possible topics include war and social change, nationalism and war, warfare theory, war and the media, gender and war, the state and the military, and war and the sciences. Papers may cover any period since the Middle Ages. The GHI will provide lodging; travel assistance may be available upon request. Successful applicants must be prepared to submit a paper of approxi- mately twenty typewritten pages by February 9, 2002. They also are expected to serve as commentators for one other paper at the seminar. Applications should include a curriculum vitae (including address and e-mail); a description of the proposed paper (2–3 pages, double-spaced); and one letter of recommendation. For further information, see our Web site at www.ghi-dc.org or contact Dr. Christoph Strupp, e-mail: strupp@ghi- dc.org. The deadline for submission is November 1, 2001. Send applications to: German Historical Institute Young Scholars Forum 1607 New Hampshire Ave., N.W. Washington, DC 20009

THYSSEN-HEIDEKING FELLOWSHIP

The GHI is delighted to announce the establishment of the Thyssen- Heideking Fellowship, in memory of the late Jürgen Heideking. This one- year postdoctoral fellowship is intended for American scholars working in

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 111 one of the three areas to which Professor Heideking made significant contributions: American history and German–American relations from the early modern period to the present; international history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the history of international relations and the comparative history of colonial systems and societies; and twentieth- cen- tury German history, with special emphasis on America’s influence on Ger- man society between 1918 and 1949. The Heideking fellow will receive a stipend of DM 41,500 (plus a family allowance, if applicable) for a fellowship period of six to twelve months, to be spent in residence at the University of Cologne for the 2002–3 academic year. The fellow will be expected to give one public lecture on his or her research. Applications should include a cover letter, a curriculum vitae, a project description (about 8–10 pages), a research schedule for the fellowship period, and two confidential letters of recommendation. The application deadline is December 1, 2001. Applicants may be interviewed at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in January 2002. Any questions may be forwarded to: [email protected]. Please forward application materials to: Dr. Christof Mauch Acting Director German Historical Institute Thyssen-Heideking Fellowship 1607 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20009

TRANSATLANTIC DOCTORAL SEMINAR 2002 GERMAN HISTORY, 1945–1990, MAY 1–4, 2002

The GHI and the BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University are pleased to announce the Eighth Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar in German History. The next seminar will take place at the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam May 1–4, 2002. The seminar will bring together young scholars from Germany and North America who are nearing completion of their doctoral degrees. We plan to invite eight doctoral students from each side of the Atlantic to discuss their dissertation research projects. We welcome proposals on any aspect of German history during the years 1945 to 1990. Doctoral students who are working on comparative topics, projects in related fields—such as

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 112 art history, legal history, and the history of science—or on the history of Austria or German-speaking Switzerland are also encouraged to apply. The discussions will be based on papers (in German or English) submitted in advance of the conference. The seminar will be conducted bilingually, in German and English. The organizers will cover travel and lodging expenses. We are now accepting applications from doctoral students whose dis- sertations are at an advanced stage but who will be granted their degrees after June 2002. Applications should include a short (2–3 pages) project description, a curriculum vitae, and a letter of reference from the dissertation adviser. Questions may be directed to Dr. Richard Wetzell by e-mail at [email protected]. Applications must be postmarked by December 1, 2001, and should be sent to: German Historical Institute Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar Attn: Bärbel Thomas 1607 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20009

SUMMER SEMINAR IN GERMANY, JUNE 2–15, 2002

The Summer Seminar, co-organized and co-sponsored by the GHI, the Ger- man Department of the University of Wisconsin—Madison, and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame, introduces graduate students to older styles of German handwriting, familiarizes them with selected German research facilities (archives and libraries), and helps them prepare for their upcoming dissertation research trips in Germany and Central Europe. The program aims to be both practical and theoretical. In practical terms, participants will be introduced to various German handwriting styles. They also will learn how to contact archives, use finding aids, identify important reference tools, and generally become acquainted with German research facilities. In theoretical terms, participants will be exposed to various approaches that archivists, librarians, and scholars use to locate source material in an exceedingly complex repository landscape. In addition, participants will hear presentations from scholars actively engaged in research and will have the chance to ask questions on research methods, strategy, and planning. Potential applicants should note that the program is exploratory in nature and should not be considered a predissertation research grant; par-

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 113 ticipants will have limited opportunity to do their own work. Moreover, most institutions that we visit will not have materials specifically related to the topics of most of the participants. Over the course of the trip, however, we hope that every participant will have the opportunity to speak to archivists and librarians about their individual projects. It is hoped that participants will gain an appreciation for the various kinds of archives and special collections located in Germany, either for future reference or for their general edification as scholars of German culture, history, and society. Applicants must be enrolled in a Ph.D. program at a North American institution of higher education. The program seeks qualified applicants interested in historical studies in a broad range of fields (art history, history, linguistics, literature, musicology, philosophy, etc.). In short, the program aims to include graduate students whose projects require that they consult source material in archives and libraries as well as handwritten materials in the alte deutsche Schrift. Preference will be given to those who have already chosen a dissertation topic, have already written a dissertation proposal, but have not yet embarked on actual research. Successful candidates must have a very good knowledge of written and spoken German. All official parts of the program will be conducted in German. A complete application consists of: (1) a cover letter that outlines the need for participation; (2) a curriculum vitae; (3) a dissertation proposal (4– 8 pages); and (4) a letter from the doctoral adviser. The deadline for submission is December 31, 2001. All applicants will be notified by February 15, 2002. For more information, contact Dr. Daniel S. Mattern, The Nanovic Institute for European Studies, phone: (219) 631-3545, e-mail: [email protected]. Please send application materials to: German Historical Institute Summer Seminar 1607 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20009

UPCOMING IN 2001 AND 2002

“Global Hollywood: Rethinking the National, Transnationality, and Glo- balization.” Conference at the University of Victoria, September 20–23, 2001. Conveners: Heide Fehrenbach (Emory University), Christof Mauch (GHI), and Thomas J. Saunders (University of Victoria).

“Judging the Past in Unified Germany.” Workshop at the GHI, October 3, 2001. Conveners: Robert Gerald Livingston (GHI) and Bernd Schäfer (GHI).

GHI BULLETIN NO. 29 (FALL 2001) 114 “The Federal Chancellery and German Unification, 1989/90.” Workshop at the GHI, October 3, 2001. Conveners: Robert Gerald Livingston (GHI) and Bernd Schäfer (GHI).

“Suicide in Early Modern Europe.” Workshop at the GHI, November 30– December 2, 2001. Conveners: Vera Lind (GHI) and Jeffrey Watt (Univer- sity of Mississippi).

“Latin America, North America, and Europe: International Encounters and Relations in Historical Perspective.” Conference at the University of Ore- gon, March 2002. Conveners: Christof Mauch (GHI) and Friedrich Schuler (University of Oregon).

“German Ostpolitik and American Detente, 1969–1972,” workshop at the GHI, May 9–10, 2002. Conveners: Bernd Schäfer (GHI) and Carsten Tessmer (BMBS).

“Sexuality in Modern German History,” conference at the GHI, fall 2002. Convener: Richard Wetzell (GHI).

“Commissioning History—Austria, Germany, and the Holocaust Era,” conference at the National D-Day Museum, New Orleans, La., fall 2002. Con- veners: Günter Bischof (Center for Austrian Culture and Commerse, Uni- versity of New Orleans), Bernd Schäfer (GHI), and Richard F. Wetzell (GHI).

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